Originally Crimson Permanent Assurance was going to be an animated short.
I had done the storyboard, drawn this out,
the idea of a moving building that sailed away.
And when it came time to do Meaning of Life,
I discovered that I was bored doing animation.
I didn't want to have to do it anymore.
I had done Time Bandits
and was feeling that I wanted to do films and not animation.
I suggested to the rest of the group that I try doing this as a short film
that would be part of the main feature.
They foolishly agreed
and said, "What a decent idea. "
So it allowed me
to have my own soundstage with my own film crew
and basically make my own movie.
The animation bits that I did in the film were very secondary
to playing around with this.
It always intrigued me,
the idea of taking what really should be an animation idea
and turn it into full-blooded, real filmmaking.
Row!
I loved the idea of using very old actors
who obviously haven't had jobs in years.
Some of them were old song-and-dance men.
They never had a chance to be heroic, active, or piratical
and having dredged these people up out of almost the grave,
one or two feet were already in by the time we got some on board,
we went to work.
Come on, boys. Let's get at 'em.
We built everything.
There was the set, the interior, which was on the stage.
We spent a lot of time thinking up gags
with old Victorian accounting gear
and how it can be transformed right into swords
and weapons of mass destruction,
but certainly ugly, nasty little things.
And so we had rubber stamps,
we had blades of old fans.
We took all this stuff and turned it into weapons of war.
Roger Pratt lit this. Roger had done Brazil with me.
This was a second chance to work together.
John Beard, who'd been the art director on Brazil,
came on as the production designer of this.
Let me out of here!
I demand to see my lawyer!
I loved the business of old pull-out desks.
Gathering the old gear. That ticker tape, of course, became
a handy way of dealing with these people.
We had no shame about doing cheap jokes
of heads bonking into windows and blah-blah-blah.
The music,
which John Du Prez did, is based on Erich Korngold's work.
Korngold did The Sea Hawk
and made the great epics with Errol Flynn in them.
It's good old romantic, sweeping music.
Basically, that's what this is. It's effectively a silent movie
dominated by this incredible score.
- And you, put the kettle on. - Aye, sir.
Myrtle Devenish is the only woman here. Myrtle had been my good luck charm.
She had been in Brazil.
She was the secretary, typing for Mike Palin's torturer.
She'd been in Time Bandits.
She was just a wonderful lady,
who was happy to be taken advantage of by men.
Tea making was a great skill. It should never be thought lowly of.
We built this set so it was both an interior and exterior set,
so the guys could operate.
At times it was frightening because these guys, being as old,
and frail as they were, had to do some incredibly dangerous action,
climbing ladders, slipping, falling.
Paddy, who pushed the man off the edge,
was a retired stuntman. Probably the oldest stuntman in the business.
He ended up doing so much work on this because it was his last chance.
That was partly what we were doing,
giving people a last chance to do something interesting.
The entire film was shot on this one rather small stage.
We built the top, the side, and when it came to the wider shots,
we had to go down to the city of London.
And the building you see here is, in fact,
Lloyd's of London's Maritime Insurance office building.
We were only allowed to shoot there on the weekend.
We didn't properly have permission.
We had to sneak in there on a Sunday morning,
and get out of there before lunch,
which meant building the pavement, rigging this huge chain,
that was supported by a crane, out of shot,
getting the basic shots done,
and getting out of there before we got nicked.
In fact, somebody had paid a sergeant down at the local police station,
some money to stay away.
Once it started moving, we were in the studio pulling the thing along,
pushing bricks and pieces out.
These shots of the building are a model.
We had two different models. One was about 4 foot high,
and one was about 16 inches high.
And, in fact, the one you see here is the 16-inches one heading away.
The buildings all around aren't buildings.
They're photographs of buildings in London.
And literally, we blew them up, mounted them on boards and cut them out.
In fact, very little depth and it's all just 2D.
Shooting the building moving was always difficult.
Even as it is now, I'm not happy with it.
It's very hard to have sails that are that small,
fluttering at the right scale. But we did as best we could.
Come on, boy. Watch it. Route. Route!
Working with models. We had done some ofthat on Brazil.
I was going to be doing a lot more on Munchausen later,
so it was a chance to try out lots of ideas.
The extraordinary thing about building this great glass city was,
we were on a very small stage,
and we had to shoot with wide-angle lenses,
to get it far enough away.
The problem with that is, wide-angle lenses distort things,
and you don't get true verticals.
So every one of those buildings is carefully placed,
at a slightly different angle to end up with proper verticals.
- Come on! Move it! Move it! - Move it!
That was a dangerous moment.
Sliding down the pole was our first and only injury.
The landing wasn't good and he broke his ankle or certainly strained it.
That's an 18 or 16-inch model that's chugging away from us there.
On the set, we had to keep blowing wind non-stop,
we had smoke always.
We had pigeons being thrown around.
It went on and on, the shoot on this thing.
Much longer than I expected.
Looking at it again here,
there are probably as many shots in this short,
as there are in the entire rest of the film.
And each one is complicated, folks.
Occasionally, I'd be pulled away during the shoot of this,
to go and put on a dress or do something silly in the main unit,
but I really felt quite isolated from the rest of the film for the majority of the shoot.
There were a lot of complaints that I was spending more money
than the rest of the film was costing.
I have no idea what this cost, but nobody told me to stop.
I'm really happy to take orders, but nobody gave me any.
Our model city.
They're about 4 or 5 feet high, each of those buildings.
It's very tricky when you're working with all these mirrored surfaces,
and with the camera moving through. 'Cause you're constantly discovering
you don't have enough buildings to block all the possible reflective areas.
We had to keep the camera moving most of the time,
to give the sense that this building was in motion.
Of course, it was standing still, and it was us constantly on the move,
shifting lights, making reflections pour in.
It was good to get a proper actor in,
like Mike Palin, who has the starring role,
being a window washer.
Fire!
Rigging these things as cannons was tricky, but it worked.
The strange thing is blowing up windows. They're harder to do than you can imagine.
I forgot we had another set here. We had the modern building.
Now that I'm looking at this again I realize why it cost so much.
It just keeps expanding. It goes on and on, endless shots.
The good thing on this DVD
is the soundtrack is much better than it was in the original film.
André Jacquemin has been putting on really good sound effects.
Great, deep bass rumble that we could never do then.
All the technology wasn't there,
but eventually caught up with the scale of this kind of filmmaking.
Originally, this film was supposed to be in the main film.
What happened was, we started cutting it,
leaving it in the position of where it now attacks the main film,
which is, I can't remember what scene that's after.
And it wasn't working. It's a very different rhythm,
than Python material.
The others in the group kept saying, "You gotta cut it shorter, it's not working. "
I kept cutting it shorter and shorter,
and the shorter it got, the less good it got, and that was a major problem,
because it was at the point when it's gonna come out of the film,
we were gonna throw this whole thing away.
Then I had a breakthrough. "Let's just pull it out of the film,
"and make it the short that precedes the film. "
The minute we did that, suddenly it worked as it was supposed to.
It gave us the opportunity to reintroduce it later,
when it attacks the main film.
I love the idea of the short film coming
and doing damage to the main film later on.
The young guys here, the sleek, young executives,
a lot of them went on to become well-known actors.
There's Ross Davidson behind the chair.
He went on to be a star in EastEnders,
and big news on the English tabloids,
with whatever romance he was involved in.
Matt Frewer is in there, too, who ended up playing Max Headroom.
I love the idea of...
- No, no! Let me! Let me! - Okay, Kane.
the sign painter. He's doing his job no matter what.
It made me laugh then, and it just made me laugh again.
In doing this battle scene,
it was the first time I had done this kind of action
and looking at it, I realize I still had a long way to go,
to learn about doing action well.
We kept it going as much as we could. It's shot after shot.
I'll have to sit down now and count the number of shots in this film,
just to realize how we'd managed to fool ourselves
into thinking we were just doing an easy little short
that could be knocked off in a week or two.
And now tragedy enters.
Up till then it was good fun. It was all just larking about,
but now tragedy.
And there it is, Matt Frewer, soon to become Max Headroom.
Soon to then go out to LA and be in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
And very soon, to fall out the window committing suicide.
Corporate suicide is what we're talking about here.
It's a terribly romantic piece of work here, this film.
Fighting for all the good things, the old things, the true things.
Not the sleek modern world that has
betrayed us and is sending us to war.
This is the right kind of war.
Weapons of accounting mass destruction.
men ofThe Permanent Assurance
battled on until...
It's interesting, this model of the end of the financial district.
It was quite small, and when we were shooting it,
I said, "This doesn't look big enough. "
What we did was put mirrored surfaces behind.
Big, sort of, mirrors that reflected the buildings we'd built,
so it doubled or tripled
the number of models we had to do this.
Here was a chance for a wonderful song by Eric.
It really didn't have a home yet.
He'd written the Accountancy Shanty before we even shot this,
with no intention of even having it involved in this, and it was just perfect.
It ended up being the great finale to this piece.
It's Eric at his wittiest.
It's fun to charter an accountant
And sail the wide accountancy
To find, explore the funds offshore
And skirt the shoals of bankruptcy
Leslie Sarony, 80 years old, the song-and-dance man, his last twitch.
It's all tax-deductible We're fairly incorruptible
Sailing on the wide accountancy
The great thing for me about this short was,
it led to meeting Harry Nilsson.
He wanted to know who the guy was that made this.
Harry eventually made his way to London.
He was a friend of Graham's, and he became a friend of mine.
He wrote some of the great songs and sang them.
And then, like most of us, went out and died.
He just beat us to the punch.
It was interesting when we showed the film in Cannes,
and we sat in this audience...
It was the first time I'd really seen this up on a big screen,
and Crimson Permanent looked fantastic. It looked like an epic.
The scale of it was massive.
Then the main film came on, and I thought,
"What? This is television! It doesn't need a big screen. "
It was a real shock.
What's interesting now when I watch the film, especially on DVD or video,
is that, in fact, the rest of the film is the right scale at home,
and Crimson Permanent Assurance doesn't work as well on the little screen.
So ultimately the main film wins out
over my desperate attempts to create epics.
That's good.
Now we've got rid of Gilliam's dreadfully expensive
Crimson Permanent Assurance film,
we can get on with the main film.
This is what people have come to see.
I love this moment, you know what I mean?
That Universal logo coming up. It's so exciting, isn't it?
The working title was A Fish Film for a long time.
It took a lot making these fish.
We had to wear these headpieces that had been created to fit behind us.
Then we all dressed in blue
and walked up and down and around on this blue dais,
at different heights, and then it all had to be cut out.
Of course, this would be much easier to do nowadays
and you wouldn't get all this break-up.
That's Terry Gilliam and me coming in there.
- Morning! - Good morning! Morning!
- Morning! - Morning!
- Frank was just asking what's new. - Was he?
Yes.
- Hey, look. Howard's being eaten. - Is he?
- Makes you think, doesn't it? - Hmm.
I mean, what's it all about?
Fast and furious,
it takes a lot of viewings to take it all in.
Sometimes, even simple little jokes of erections and all,
you don't take in the first time.
But maybe that's a good thing about the film.
It'll last forever 'cause you'll have to watch it over and over.
You can slow it down on your DVD and watch in detail,
what might have been better at half the speed that I shot it.
What's the point of all this hoax
Is it the chicken and the egg time
I love Terry's balloon man,
walking through the wilderness of tits.
Well, ça, c'est le meaning of life
Is life just a game
These are some absolutely classic Gilliam cartoons. Just wonderful.
These houses landing
used to be the houses outside my flat in North London.
This is probably the best bit of the animation in the film.
I did concentrate quite a bit on this
and then let the other fade away.
In some way there, this shot sort of prefigures Brazil.
What does it mean? It's got to have some meaning, doesn't it?
There's Venus. There's the wind blowing her.
Then out of this rises some sort of Eastern, Buddhist nonsense.
We're mixing religions, we're mixing philosophies.
You've got television watchers, the true religion of our day.
Just totally inspired, by the way.
But why is he melting? What goes on there?
The difficult thing with this animation was
we actually were using not just cut-out animation,
but we were using full-frame animation.
The age of cloning,
before Dolly the sheep.
It will all be made clear
For this is The Meaning of Life
C'est le sens de la vie
This is The Meaning of Life
Yeah, look at television.
"I'm watching television. I feel good at home now.
"I don't feel I should be in the cinema watching this.
"It's just perfect for my little teeny screen at home. "
Now this scene, the hospital scene, used to be the start of the film.
One of the sad things
about putting The Crimson Permanent Assurance film first,
is that the reactions to this scene were never quite as good
as they were when we started off with this scene.
Coming after The Crimson Permanent Assurance,
because there's been so much noise and everything,
this scene always seems a little bit down.
Because it was always designed as the start of the film.
But it's much funnier than The Crimson Permanent Assurance.
This is the good stuff.
John and Graham playing their silly game.
It's a bit bare in here today, isn't it?
- Yes. - Yes. More apparatus, please, Nurse.
- The EEG, the BP monitor and the AVV. - Certainly, Doctor.
And get the machine that goes "ping. "
And get the most expensive machines in case the administrator comes.
Of course, Graham, being the qualified doctor on the team,
was our consultant for all this.
He made sure that we ordered all the right equipment for the operating room.
Jolly good. That's better.
- That's much, much better. - Yes, that's more like it.
Still something missing, though.
So he knew all the names of all the different bits of equipment.
- Patient. - Patient, yes.
- Where's the patient? Patient! - Anyone seen the patient?
- Here she is. - Bring it over here.
In fact, about seven years before this, I suppose,
my wife, Alison, had our daughter, Sally,
and she'd undergone an experience very close to this.
She'd been put on a drip to induce Sally because the hospital decided
the baby had to be born on a certain day, whether it was ready or not.
So Alison found herself being induced
and they virtually did pull the baby out of her. Just as in here.
And I was there, and it felt exactly like this.
The mother was the last person they thought of.
The emphasis seemed to be on the technology of the machines.
And I was amazed when John and Graham wrote this sketch.
I thought they must have been at Sally's birth as well,
because it mirrored so accurately what I remembered.
And that's the most expensive machine in the whole hospital.
I just love the whole idea of the patient as being the object.
- Switch everything on. - Morning, gentlemen.
- Morning. Morning, gentlemen. - Morning.
- Morning, Mr. Pycroft. - Mr. Pycroft.
Oh, very impressive, very impressive.
- And what are you doing this morning? - It's a birth.
And what sort of thing is that?
Well, that's when we take a new baby out of a lady's tummy.
Wonderful what we can do nowadays.
I see you have the machine that goes "ping. "
Now the "Ping!" here,
André and I spent ages trying to find the right "Ping!"
I never felt we got quite the right one.
Thank you, thank you. We try to do our best. Well, do carry on.
This says so much about what's happened to medicine,
and what's happened to broadcasting.
The accountancy has taken over, the management has taken over.
Here it comes.
And frighten it.
Thank you. And the rough towels!
Show it to the mother. That's enough.
- Right. Sedate her. - Number the child.
Measure it, blood-type it and isolate it.
Okay, show's over.
Is it a boy or a girl?
I think it's a little early to start imposing roles on it, don't you?
Now, a word of advice. You may find that you suffer for some time,
a totally irrational feeling of depression, PND, as we doctors call it.
So, it's lots of happy pills for you,
and you can find out all about the birth when you get home.
It's available on BetaMax, VHS and Super 8.
BetaMax, that sort of dates the film, doesn't it?
The miracle of birth, part two. The third world.
Oh, bloody hell.
- Oh, get it, would you, Deidre? - All right, Mum.
We had a terrible job trying to find a place that looked like this.
In fact, we didn't find a place in the end. As you can see, we painted in the backdrop.
And we found a street that was almost right.
But it was terribly difficult to find the Yorkshire back streets.
Michael, Evadne, Alice, Dominique and Sasha, it's your bedtime.
Now don't argue!
These kids were wonderful. We had about 60 of them there, I think.
We had to design the sets, so you had the staircase going up,
and then going across at an angle, so that you could see them everywhere.
And I wanted the high shelf for the mantelpiece,
so we could have children sitting up there. I wanted the whole screen full of children.
No, no, that's the way it is, my loves.
Blame the Catholic Church
for not letting me wear one of those little rubber things.
I think it's the girl on the left that does all the singing.
She doesn't sing on screen, but she was the actual voice.
When we had all 60 children in,
they all had to have permission from their parents and everything.
When he got to some of the rude stuff, like when Mike says,
"If the Roman Catholic Church only let me wear
"one of those little rubber things on the end of my cock. "
He actually said, "If they'd let me wear
"one of those rubber things on the end of my sock. "
And then we dubbed it in later as "cock. "
We were quite surprised. The parents, everybody was happy for the children to sing
Every Sperm is Sacred. They all loved the idea.
I do think this opening stuff is absolutely brilliant.
The performances are spectacular.
The ideas are sublime.
It's a great character of Michael's, I think.
This song itself goes through about three stages.
It starts off as a sort of musical recitative,
then it goes into a hymn,
and then it goes into Oliver!
Have you ever done anything as long a sequence as this?
It just goes on and on building and getting better.
I think this is one of my favorite bits of Python.
Those poor little kids in the bathtub. They got really cold by the end of filming.
Because
Every sperm is sacred
The little girl in the middle is so lovely.
I tried to persuade my daughter, Sally, to do it, but she wouldn't.
The girl behind Mike looks so pre-Raphaelite.
They've all got such great faces.
Every sperm is great
If a sperm is wasted
God gets quite irate
Amazing little girl there.
This little girl who sings now, the solo, she was so perfect.
She was miming to one of the other children's voices,
but she never gets it wrong.
For each sperm that can't be found
It's just great stuff.
Every sperm is good
Every sperm is needed
Brings a lump to your throat, doesn't it?
The kids were so great. They're putting everything they've got into it.
I had a terrible job trying to sing this.
It was four different takes, with a different line from each take.
Again, in Cannes, it was wonderful,
with this audience of people all in their dinnerjackets.
Crimson Permanent comes through and that's all jolly,
easy to take 'cause it's visually easily understandable.
Then the film started,
and they didn't know what to make of it. They were very confused and restless.
Then, by the end of Every Sperm is Sacred, they were applauding.
We had actually won them.
Every sperm is needed
In your neighborhood
I think this was filmed in Rochdale.
This is looking up the street the other way now.
Very, very hard. Almost the last 19th century,
two-up, two-down working-class street we could find.
And mine
Let the pagans spill theirs
Our designer wanted them to have suspenders on
and lift them all up, which they do, but I thought that a bit too obvious.
I do like the Papal Discount House.
Every sperm is sacred
Every sperm is good
One of the poor girls fell through one of these roofs she was dancing on.
Every sperm is sacred
We had fire eaters
and a paper dragon and fireworks and flags of all nations.
This was, I think, the third take.
We couldn't believe we'd taken all morning to get everyone in costume,
and then we did three takes, and said, "Well, that's it. "
"Right up to the end?" "Yes, that's it. It's perfect. "
So you see my problem, little ones.
I can't keep you all here any longer.
Speak up!
I like that "Speak up!" and the girl looks round.
The kids look so great in this bit, this scene. I can't get over how
genuine they look. Their faces look like they fit the period as well.
God knows all.
He'd see through such a cheap trick. What we do to ourselves, we do to Him.
You could have had them pulled off in an accident.
No. Children, I know you're trying to help, but believe me, me mind's made up.
I've given this long and careful thought,
and it has to be medical experiments for the lot of you.
It's coming up to my favorite bit of the film.
I think it's this scene with Graham and Eric as the Protestant couple.
Of course, the children, to keep them going with the scene,
we had them going down the road into the next house
and around and out of the back of the other.
- What are we, dear? - Protestant, and fiercely proud of it.
Graham was just so right in this part.
And Eric is a great character.
- But it's the same with us, Harry. - What do you mean?
Well, I mean we've got two children,
and we've had sexual intercourse twice.
That's not the point. We could have it any time we wanted.
- Really? - Oh, yes. And what's more,
because we don't believe in all that Papist claptrap...
This is quite a tough scene to do because it's all just one shot, basically.
I think we do a close-up. But we were trying to do it all in one take.
It's quite a lot, especially for Graham to remember.
He was really good at it. He was really on top form.
I could, if I wanted, have sexual intercourse with you.
Oh, yes, Harry.
I really like the difference between the interior of the Protestants' house
and the aridness of it, and what he's eating
and the life that was going on in the Roman Catholic house.
And Eric's suppressed sexuality is just,
really one of the funniest things he's done.
he may not have realized the full significance of what he was doing...
Of course, this scene was meant to run into
the Martin Luther sequence, which we shot,
then finally cut out of the film at the last moment.
But as proud owners of this DVD,
you can see the Martin Luther scene.
but also to enhance the stimulation of sexual congress.
- Have you got one? - Have I got one? Well, no,
but I can go down the road anytime I want and walk into Harry's
and hold my head up high and say, in a loud, steady voice,
"Harry, I want you to sell me a condom.
"In fact, today I think I'll have a French Tickler, for I am a Protestant. "
This is Graham at his best when he's like this. He's just spectacular.
He and Eric, what a couple. Isn't that...
That's the great Protestant couple of all time.
But despite the attempts of Protestants
to promote the idea of sex for pleasure...
That is where the Martin Luther scene would have come.
The Meaning of Life, part two. Growth and learning.
And this was all shot up in Mill Hill.
We had a big decision to make
because we had to give them a school uniform.
And their school uniform was dark, black blazer.
But we found, when we came to dress us up as schoolboys,
we looked older in dark colors. We needed a light color,
which meant we had to have light-colored blazers made
for the entire school. And this cost the production a lot of money.
But we had to have it.
I'm not sure what to say about anything here. It's all...
I've changed my mind now that I've watched more of the film.
I think it's the best thing Python's ever done.
Let us praise God.
- O Lord. - O Lord.
You are so big.
I think this speaks to me of countless school assemblies and ceremonies.
Gosh, we're all really impressed down here, I can tell You.
Gosh, we're all really impressed down here, I can tell you.
Forgive us, O Lord, for this, our dreadful toadying.
And barefaced flattery.
But you're so strong,
and, well, just so super.
Fantastic.
- Amen, Reverend. - Amen.
Now two boys have been found rubbing linseed oil
into the school cormorant.
Now some of you may feel that the cormorant does not play an important part
in the life of the school, but I would remind you
that it was presented to us by the corporation of the town of Sudbury,
to commemorate Empire Day, when we try to remember
the names of all those from the Sudbury area,
who so gallantly gave their lives
to keep China British.
So from now on, the cormorant is strictly out of bounds!
Oh, and, Jenkins,
apparently, your mother died this morning.
Chaplain.
I just love that throwaway.
The little boy just looking up and biting his lip.
No other reaction.
Michael playing his very officious little chaplain.
School chaplain.
Don't braise or bake or boil us
Or stir-fry us in a wok
Oh, please don't lightly poach us
Or baste us with hot fat
Now this is the scene where we weren't really sure what was going to work,
'cause we were all meant to be playing, you know, sort of 16-year-olds.
There's Eric, me, Mike, Graham.
Well into our 30s at this time.
Trying to look like we were schoolboys still.
This is where it was so incredulous to have these light-colored blazers.
In order to get away with it.
We chose this place at Mill Hill.
It was difficult to find a place that met up with one's
concept of a classic classroom.
But I like this one because it had the windows on all three sides.
This is the kind of piece that John loves doing,
where there's a whole lot of nonsense to remember.
He actually loves to be able to get
a lot of difficult stuff under his belt.
and make sure he moves your clothes down onto the lower peg for you.
- Now... - Sir?
Yes, Wymer?
My younger brother's going out with Dibble this weekend, sir.
But I'm not having my hair cut today, so do I move my clothes...
I do wish you'd listen, Wymer.
While we were filming this on stage it got very overcast.
It got so dark it just looked absolutely like night outside.
We had to stop filming, although it was the middle of the day.
Those things you don't expect to happen.
greet the visitors and report to Mr. Viney that you've had your chit signed.
Now, sex.
I remember when John and Graham read this script out.
I just thought it was the funniest thing.
Well, had I got as far as
the penis entering the vagina?
- No, sir. - No, sir. No, sir.
Well, had I done foreplay?
- Yes, sir. - Ah. Well, as we all know all about foreplay...
I love the idea that you could put anything into a classroom context,
and it'll become immediately boring to children.
Just the way it's taught.
- Carter? - Oh, was it taking your clothes off, sir?
Well, and after that?
Oh, putting them on a lower peg, sir.
The purpose of foreplay is to cause the vagina to lubricate,
so that the penis can penetrate more easily.
Could we have a window open, please, sir?
Why is it that line makes me laugh?
I have no idea. "Could we have the window open, please, sir?"
One of those lines that doesn't seem to have any reason,
for making me laugh, it just does.
Now, did I do vaginal juices last week?
Oh, do pay attention, Wadsworth!
I know it's Friday. Watching the football, are you?
Boy, move over there. I'm warning you.
I may decide to set an exam this term.
- Oh, sir! - Sir!
So just listen.
Now did I or did I not
do vaginal juices?
Yes, sir.
Name two ways of getting them flowing, Watson.
Rubbing the clitoris, sir?
What's wrong with a kiss, boy?
John's brilliant performance.
The way a teacher can just kill off any subject.
Give her a kiss, boy.
The way he deals with...
Good, good. Well done, Wymer.
- Stroking the thighs, sir? - Yes, yes.
- I suppose so. - Biting the neck.
Yes, good. Nibbling the earlobe,
kneading the buttocks and so on and so forth.
So we have all these possibilities,
before we stampede towards the clitoris, Watson.
Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.
Now this is one of the most inspired bits of set design
from our production designer, Harry Lange.
Originally we just thought we'd pull a bed in or something.
And then he said, "Why don't we have the blackboard
"unfolding into a four-poster bed?"
I just thought it was an outrageous piece of design.
And it just seems to work terribly well.
Kind of visually does what the...
Now, this is Pat Quinn who's just terrific. She's a wonderful actress.
And she was so game doing this part.
- Oh, sorry, sir. Sorry. - Humphrey, I hope you don't mind.
I told the Garfields we would dine with them tonight.
- Yes, yes, well, I suppose we must. - I said we'd be there by 8:00.
At least it'll give me a reason to wind up the staff meeting.
I know you don't like them, but I couldn't make another excuse.
It's just that I felt...
Wymer, this is for your benefit.
Would you kindly wake up?
I've no intention of going through this all again.
There was some contention about removing their pants.
And I said, "I think you should, really, 'cause it is a sex lesson after all. "
We'll take the foreplay as read, if you don't mind, dear.
No, of course not, Humphrey.
So, the man starts by entering or mounting his good lady wife,
in the standard way.
Matter-of-factness of it all.
There we are, that's better.
Michael there with the ocarina.
It's so convincing.
It's exactly what goes on
in classrooms all the world over, I'm sure.
Put it there, boy. Put it there on the table.
While the wife maximizes her clitoral stimulation by the shaft of the penis,
by pushing forward.
Thank you, dear. Now, as the sexual excitement mounts...
What's funny, Biggs?
Oh, nothing, sir.
Do, please, share your little joke with the rest of us.
I mean, obviously, something frightfully funny's going on.
No, honestly, sir.
Well, as it's so funny, I think you'd better be selected to play for the boys' team,
in the rugby match against the masters this afternoon.
Oh, no, sir!
Come on, Buster!
We had a dummy in there for the masters to beat up.
What little kids.
Unfortunately it wasn't a muddy day, so we had to create this mud patch.
It's like a ballet of rugger.
Then we sort of carefully had to do the transition
into the First World War scene.
We carefully lined this up so the goal post behind
echoed in the war, with the two trees.
I don't know whether anyone ever notices.
This was shot on the backlot at Borehamwood at Elstree.
Just a little hill behind the studios, up there.
And we dug it all up and created this
First World War battlefield.
There was a joke that we missed out, which I always wished we'd put in.
When we come over the top, first of all, I was supposed to say,
"Jenkins, you go and get the buggers on the left flank,
"and I'll get the heterosexuals on the other flank. "
When we did the dialog scene here,
we had explosions going off. We had, I think...
Because we were trying to do it in one take,
we had something like 60 explosions going off in one shot,
which is a phenomenal number of explosions.
Poor George, the special effects designer, was saying,
"Do you really need this number of explosions?"
It was quite a superhuman effort.
The thing I remember most about this,
was that in between takes,
the special effects guys had to go out there and reset all of the explosions.
And one guy went out there,
and one thing you don't do is carry your explosions in a plastic bag.
And he walked out there and it was still hot in certain areas.
Suddenly there's this explosion, and it went up.
And the guy got blown up.
We should have shot it differently,
at a certain point we should have got into the trench, down,
so we didn't need the explosions anymore.
We could just concentrate on the scene. But that's not the way it was shot.
It was just shot with everybody up, which is
easier to shoot, but probably more time consuming,
because you had to constantly reset the explosions.
Well, now, that is thoughtful, Sturridge.
The special effects guy who got blown up was all right in the end.
I can't remember how long he was in hospital,
and, by God, I wish I could remember his name,
'cause that kind of sacrifice deserves memory.
He was just a guy walking.
It was like watching a battlefield 'cause you've got craters out there.
You see this guy walking out. Other people were out doing stuff.
He steps over the crack and disappears down the crater.
A huge explosion! "Oh, my God, no!"
Anyway,
that's the price you pay when you make movies.
- You've hurt his feelings, now. - Don't mind me, Spadge.
Toffs is all the same. One minute, it's all please and thank you.
- The next, they'll kick you in the teeth. - Yeah.
- Let's not give him the cake. - I don't want any cake.
Look, Blackitt cooked it especially for you, you bastard.
Eric starts corpsing in this scene.
- I don't mean to be ungrateful. - I'll be all right...
This is the bit where Eric starts corpsing.
He tries to cover it up. When does he go?
slicing the lemons, mixing the sugar and almonds.
I mean, you try getting butter to melt at 15 degrees below zero.
He's laughing there.
He just can't stop laughing.
He manages to pull himself together by the time he comes back in.
All right, we will eat the cake. They're right.
It's too good a cake not to eat.
- Get the plates and knives, Walters. - Yes, sir. How many plates?
Six.
- Oh, better make it five. - Tablecloth, sir?
Yes, get the tablecloth.
No, no, I'll get the tablecloth.
You better get the gate leg table, Hordern.
- And the little lamp, sir? - Yes.
Oh, and while you're at it, you'd better get a doily.
I'll bring two, sir, in case one gets crumpled.
Okay!
But, of course, warfare isn't all fun. Right. Stop that.
It's all very well to laugh at the military,
but when one considers the meaning of life,
it is a struggle between alternative viewpoints of life itself.
Without the ability to defend one's own viewpoint,
against other perhaps more aggressive ideologies,
then reasonableness and moderation could quite simply disappear.
That is why we'll always need an army.
May God strike me down were it to be otherwise.
There's a constant attempt in the film to drag the whole thing back
to the meaning of life.
I remember when we first started writing The Meaning of Life.
The earlier ideas, I always thought, were going to be brilliant.
And then we were doing Monty Python's World War lll,
which I thought had great potential,
everybody was wearing advertisements on their uniforms.
Everything had a sponsor,
like Formula 1 racing, and maybe the world is moving towards that.
Well, we didn't go in that direction. We had another idea, which I really loved,
which was the fact that the film was on trial, and we were on trial,
because the prosecutors had said it's not a film, it's a tax-dodge.
And we were going to be doing things which had scenes...
Say, one would be doing Hamlet, but we'd be doing it in Barbados,
or some tax exile that was completely inappropriate for Hamlet.
And little by little, through the course of the film, the case went on.
We were, at one point, even going to be doing advertisements in the film.
We were actually going to go and get people to take up advertising space,
and we would then do their ads.
And they would give us lots of money which would finance the film.
Ultimately, we were going to be found guilty,
and then we had to choose our method of execution.
By the end of it, each of us would've died a horrible and interesting death.
That was another idea that didn't go any further.
Writing it was interesting because we were down in Jamaica.
As a group, we weren't working in quite the same way
as we had when we were doing the television shows.
In the end, there was so much material that didn't go into the film.
Some of it was quite wondrous.
But what's in there, in retrospect, when I watch the film,
I really do find it incredible. I actually think the first parts of the film,
the beginning, the Catholic family, the Protestant couple, the sperm song,
are some of the finest things Python's ever done.
Performances in the film, I think, are as good, if not better,
than anything Python has done.
I can't remember, was Graham alive when we did this?
Now this was shot in Glasgow near Campsie Fells.
And we got up there to shoot it, and there was a rebellion.
All the guys we'd got to come and be our Zulu warriors rebelled.
'Cause it was a miserable, terrible day.
It was cold and misty and wet,
and, honestly, the Campsie Fells didn't look like South Africa.
It looked like the Campsie Fells.
Then, about 10:00, we got word that there'd been a revolt,
and they'd refused to put on the costumes. They said they were too flimsy.
So we had to abandon the shoot that day and reschedule it for the next day.
We couldn't get any black actors. We had to get white actors,
and had to ship down to London
for tons of blacking, black makeup and black wigs.
The very few ethnic actors we had, we had to put in the front
and then everybody in the background was just blacked up.
It just looked terrible.
But the great thing was, it was a beautiful and sunny day the next day
and suddenly it looked a little bit more like Africa.
Not bad. Bitten to shreds, though.
Must be that hole in the bloody mosquito net.
Yes, savage little blighters, aren't they?
- Excuse me, sir. - Yes, Chadwick?
I'm afraid Perkins got rather badly bitten during the night.
- Well, so did we. - Yes, but I do think Doctor ought to see him.
I crease myself watching everybody in there
because everybody's doing great characters.
Everybody had become very confident by the time we made the film, as performers.
Morning, Perkins.
This is a scene we shot the previous day when we had the revolt of the extras.
And, of course, it didn't matter that we were shooting this tent
and it didn't matter that it was grey and horrible.
John Cleese was extremely ill during this take.
He kept on going outside and being sick.
He'd stayed in a hotel and had eaten some prawns.
I had came in to say something to him, when he was eating them.
I could smell it was slightly off.
I was about to say, "John, I wouldn't eat those if I were you. "
Then I realized he'd just finished eating them.
So I thought, "There's no point in saying anything. "
But I wasn't surprised when I heard he'd got food poisoning that day.
But he manages to pull it off.
He doesn't give any indication of suffering from food poisoning when he's acting.
Is something up?
Yes. During the night, old Perkins got his leg bitten sort of off.
Oh, yeah. Been in the wars, have we?
- Yes. - Any headache?
I think Eric and Graham are brilliant in this scene.
And one of the reasons why they're so good is because of the costumes.
They're so meticulously researched and done
by Jim Acheson, who's won three Oscars for costumes.
Just look at Eric's shirt there.
It's so correctly tailored for the period.
And Graham's costume and makeup
makes him into a period character.
It's meticulous costuming. Brilliant stuff.
Any other problems I can reassure you about?
No, I'm fine.
Jolly good. Well, must be off.
So it'll just grow back again, then, will it?
I remember watching this scene. I've always felt it was a great joy
because the acting is brilliant. I just think it's...
The group there, everybody's brilliant.
It's much subtler acting than Python used to do.
And it's... Again, what's interesting, this is all done in one shot.
It's not full of cuts and things. It's about really good performing.
this is no more than an educated guess,
I'd like to make that clear...
It's great to be able to watch this as an outsider.
I think, "That's what they were doing while I was banging around in that other studio. "
They were making really good work.
A tiger?
When we were working, we'd get geed up, certainly I do, and I think Terry does
and it's really hard to deal with criticism.
It's... One's being very defensive, protective, critical of everything.
And to be able to step back years later and see how good the work is here
just knocks me out. I think it's really nicely done.
Again, the costumes with the helmet all hacked to pieces.
It's sort of, a lot of thought. Jim pays such attention to detail
and he's full of ideas.
Just makes a little difference, you know.
The man coming in from outside, who's half been beaten up.
You can see the Sellotape on my beard coming off on the left there.
You can see... The toupee tape. Never noticed that before.
The MO says we can stitch it back on if we can find it immediately.
- Right, sir. I'll organize a party. - It's hardly the time for that, Sergeant.
- A search party. - Much better idea.
We were just so lucky that the sky was blue today.
We'll try and get it cleared up by the time you get back.
- We showed 'em, didn't we, sir? - Yes.
Here. We got a search party. Leave that alone.
All this killing, bloodshed. Bloody good fun, sir, isn't it?
Yes, very good.
- Morning, sir. - Nasty wound you've got there, fella.
Thank you very much, sir.
Come on, Private. Making up a search party.
Better than staying home, isn't it?
I mean, at home if you kill someone, they arrest you.
Here, they give you a gun and show you what to do, sir.
I mean, I killed 15 of those buggers, sir. At home, they'd hang me.
Here, they'll give me a fucking medal, sir.
I love these jungles that we were able to create in England
on the backlot.
We shipped in a huge quantity of greenery and stuff.
We were just shooting it in a bit of dingle at the back of the lot
by a stream, and we dressed it with all the tropical plants we could get hold of.
All I want to know is, what was Mike holding in his hand there?
Was it a little hairbrush, a mirror, or what?
These are the secrets of our arcane kind of filmmaking.
And I don't know what it means.
Don't shoot. Don't shoot. We're not a tiger.
He's got a sword now in his hand.
We were just...
Why are you dressed as a tiger?
He's got it again, that thing in his hand. What is it?
This is a strange sketch.
It always seemed to us one of the funniest scenes when it was read out.
It's got very little justification for it. It doesn't go anywhere.
In fact, where it comes in the film, it seems to be a low point in the film.
- Simple as that. - Nothing more to it.
What is this scene about?
I've never quite understood this japery going on.
We've reverted back to old Python. It's just silly.
It's really conky-looking.
We've left some really fine work behind.
It's one of those strange exchanges
where there's no justification for it whatsoever, really.
It's funny, but it's vaguely unsatisfactory I suppose
because there's no explanation for why they're lying.
We're inmates of a Bengali psychiatric institution,
and we escaped by making this skin out of old used cereal packets.
- It doesn't matter! - What?
It doesn't matter why they're dressed as a tiger. Have they got my leg?
Good thinking. Well, have you?
- Actually... - Yes?
We were thinking of training as taxidermists.
We wanted to get the feel of it from the animal's point of view.
Be quiet!
This scene is just another ridiculous idea.
I think while the rest of them are busy doing this scene
I'm being outfitted backstage
in the most uncomfortable rubber suit imaginable.
Having to be inside a Negro.
It's hard work, and probably politically incorrect.
We found the tiger skin in a bicycle shop in Cairo.
The owner wanted it taken to Dar Es Salaam.
Shut up!
Now look, have you or have you not got his leg?
- Yes. No. No, no, no, no. - No. No, no, no.
This scene probably seemed a really good idea when it was first written.
I'm not talking to you.
Right. Search the thicket.
Oh, come on. I mean, do we look like
the sort of chaps who'd creep into a camp at night,
steal into someone's tent, anaesthetize them, tissue-type them,
amputate a leg and run away with it?
Search the thicket.
What does Mike have in his hand?
Actually, I think there is one there somewhere.
Terry Gilliam in his starring role.
The unzipping!
What are we doing here? I can't remember how this came up.
The zipper never worked as well as we had hoped.
If you notice, it opens at the bottom.
The most unexplained bit of the film, The Middle of the Film.
Originally we were going to have lots of stars here saying,
"Welcome to the middle of the film. "
But we couldn't afford to get them in the end.
We'd hoped to have Sean Connery and Julie Andrews and people.
In the end it was Mike Palin as this strange lady.
I don't know who she is.
Yell out so that all the cinema can hear you. So here we are with Find the Fish.
Now the next scene was shot inside Battersea Power Station, believe it or not.
We'd built this little set.
It's an absolutely remarkable 1920s industrial interior
with this parquet flooring, and it's actually all gone now.
So this is one of the few records
of what Battersea Power Station looked like in its heyday.
One of the great moments of Python.
Wouldn't you like to know? It was a lovely little fish.
Now, this troll that comes forward here
was actually a costume we had built forTime Bandits
and it's used in the scene where the giant crushes a house.
And we never saw it in close-up
so we dragged it out of storage and included it in this.
But I do think this is Python at its surreal best.
Fish, fish, fishy, oh!
Look at that ceiling. It's just extraordinary.
That went wherever I did go.
- Look up his trunk! - Yeah! It's in his trousers!
Back to the fish.
Fantastic! Really great!
Really risky, yeah.
There was a feeling that, in order for the film not to be just a sketch film,
which it is, of course...
I kept wanting to pull out more about the meaning of life,
as if there was some point to it. As if we're actually going somewhere.
That explains some of the cuts that we made.
- What do you think the next bit will be? - Caption, I expect.
What, about the next stage of life, you mean? Oh, yeah. Here we go.
Middle Age.
Could've guessed it.
Here we've cut a sequence. We see Mike and Eric arriving at the hotel.
They go into their room. They love everything.
It's just a terribly ordinary room.
The view out of the back is just all a roller
so you can change the view to a townscape or a landscape or whatever.
We cut that and we also cut the first scene in the restaurant,
which is when Carol comes on as a waitress.
It's a pity 'cause it is a very funny sequence,
but on the DVD you'll be able to see it.
served in an authentic medieval English dungeon atmosphere.
The idea of a dungeon restaurant that also doubles up as a Hawaiian restaurant.
I've always had a secret suspicion
that the Hendys were my mother and father.
They'd turned up on several Python shoots.
Eric's checking through his bag because that was part of the earlier scene.
We left this scene in.
In fact, it wasn't quite as funny as the scene with Carol in the Beefeater's costume.
But I kept it in because it was about the meaning of life.
In a way, that's why I think the other stuff went as well.
You can talk about the Steelers-Bears game Saturday,
or you could reminisce about really great World Series.
- No, no, no. - What is this one here?
- That's philosophy. - Is that a sport?
No, it's more of an attempt
to construct a viable hypothesis...
I don't know if it's the right thing to do in the end.
You always regret that you've cut things.
Behind Mike you can see one of the waitresses in that Beefeater's costume.
Beautifully designed again by Jim Acheson.
- Philosophy for two? - Right.
- Room? - 259.
- Yeah. How do we...
- Oh, you folks want me to start you off? - We'd appreciate that.
Okay! Well, look.
I'm not sure where John gets this waiter character from.
Well, we went to Miami last year and California the year before...
No, no, no. I mean, why we're here, on this planet.
I just love Mike's character here.
Right. You ever wanted to know what it's all about?
Nope.
Righty-ho! Well,
see, throughout history, there've been certain men and women,
who've tried to find the solution to the mysteries of existence.
- Great! - And we call these guys philosophers.
- Oh! - And that's what we're talking about.
- Right! - Oh, that's neat.
Whatever happened to all these Python performers?
They were so good. Really brilliant.
They've gone on to what? I guess fame and fortune.
They've never been as good as they are here.
This scene between John, Eric and Mike, I think they're brilliant. Each one of them.
I never see them get to do that sort of thing ever more.
Mike has got to go around the world being nice.
Eric has got to live in LA being clever.
John has got to be in films,
that pay him lots of money for doing very little work.
John's really good in this.
There's an S in Nietzsche.
Oh, well, yes, there is.
Do all philosophers have an "S" in them?
Yeah. I think most of them do.
Oh. Does that mean Salena Jones is a philosopher?
Yeah! Right! She could be.
She sings about the meaning of life.
Yeah. That's right, but I don't think she writes her own material.
No. Oh, maybe Schopenhauer writes her material.
No. Burt Bacharach writes it.
There's no "S" in Burt Bacharach.
Or in Hal David.
Who's Hal David?
He writes the lyrics. Burt just writes the tunes.
Only now, he's married to Carole Bayer Sager.
Waiter? This conversation isn't very good.
Oh, I'm sorry, sir. We do have one today that's not on the menu.
It's sort of a specialty of the house, you know?
Live organ transplants.
Live organ transplants? What's that?
Why we start with a picture of Haile Selassie I have no idea.
But there we are.
Don't worry, dear. I'll get it.
It's Terry Gilliam as a Rastafarian Jew,
which is rather a strange construct.
- Yes? - Hello. Can we have your liver?
I don't know why it happens, but they gave me this small part,
which I decided had to be a Jewish Rastafarian.
John and Graham as a couple of desperados.
Terry really is a great performer.
Really good.
I forgot. A Jewish Rastafarian with a Hitler moustache.
- What's this, then? - A liver donor's card.
Need we say more?
He's totally convincing.
My God!
He does these wonderful twitches which are so horrible.
This scene was actually quite fun to do.
It was so awful.
The gore is what's so great.
I love... Graham's working away, and John completely distracted,
waiting for something to come into his life, it seems to me
and she does.
- That's right, madam. - Typical of him.
He goes down to the public library, sees a few signs up,
comes home all full of good intentions.
Terry's just giving the most wonderful performance of his life here,
his hand and wriggling is...
You see Graham there, just reaching over to get the liver out of something else.
They all go to saving lives, madam.
That's what he used to say.
I think this is one of the great romances that Python has ever created.
The one between John and Terry.
It gives a bit of hope to everybody in the world
that they'll find that right person sometime, somewhere.
It just helps to have no taste.
John's strange performance here,
sort of abstracted...
He's got cotton wool in his mouth, as well.
Sort of à la Marlon Brando.
It was an absurd situation where somebody had to keep handing Graham
bits of offal and organs and things.
They never seem to come out of the right places.
He reaches up to my shoulder and moves an organ into place.
I think when Python moves into Grand Guignol,
nobody comes close to us.
You do realize
he has to be, well, dead, by the terms of the card...
This scene makes me crazy,
'cause I was sitting there, watching awful Terry with his curlers, and John...
I wish he'd come back to us.
I mean, will you stay on your own?
Or is there, well, someone else, sort of...
It's almost the kind of love scene that you want to avert your eyes.
You don't really want to have to watch what goes on between these two.
Now one of my favorite bits of the film coming up,
Eric's Galaxy Song, which I think is one of the best things he's done.
It's such a lovely song.
They're a great selection
of really intelligent, wise, and funny songs.
- Can we have your liver then? - I would be scared.
All right.
I'll tell you what.
Listen to this.
Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
and things seem hard or tough,
and people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
and you feel that you've had
quite enough.
The wall collapses, but you hardly notice, really.
Light change.
And revolving at 900 miles an hour
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second so it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
This was the only verse that was meant to be shot like this.
It was then meant to go on to some animation.
But when we were shooting, I said, "Let's just do the next verse as well. "
So that's this verse.
But Eric hadn't rehearsed this one. So this verse was just...
You see him look at the camera occasionally because he hadn't rehearsed this.
We're just walking on sideways to the stars, which is totally not what you're meant to do.
This bit was just meant to be a temporary filling.
In fact, in the end,
Terry never, sort of, did the rest of the animation.
So we had to use this bit.
We go round every 200 million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe
Do I do some animation here? Good.
He starts the animation from here, but it was meant to start before the piece.
But this is called proper animation. I basically drew it out,
sorted it, and then gave it to some excellent people to actually make it work.
It's a great piece of animation there.
Worth holding it back.
There's something about the cosmic sperm...
Brilliant piece of animation.
I was very keen to do the big-bang theory.
So this is a time-space continuum
about to curve like Einstein had predicted.
What a delightful song. It's got wonderful lyrics.
So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure
Very funny, through all this scene, I keep watching John.
He's doing nothing but everything in the background.
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth
We had to bring the sound of the fridge closing
before the fridge actually closes
so that it fitted in with the rhythm of the song.
Yeah. Yeah.
Can we have your liver, then?
- Yeah, all right. You talked me into it. - Eric!
The shooting style changes, folks.
This is where Terry Gilliam's original pirates scene was meant to go, originally.
It was meant to be just a five-minute animation,
that's how it started off.
Then Terry gradually took over the studio next door
and was shooting more elaborate stuff
than we were shooting for the main film. He went on and on.
I was a bit too busy to notice.
Terry's piece expanded and expanded
until finally it was the 15 or 17-minute piece that it is now.
And when we played it originally in this position,
it just didn't work.
It was just too long and just didn't fit in.
People were looking at the film and saying,
"It's a quite funny film, but that pirate sequence doesn't work. "
Terry said he'd always thought it would work at the beginning.
And he got this idea for how it would come back into the film.
So that's what we did.
We shot this bit, and we had the return of the short film.
However, this is rarely achieved, owing to man's unique ability
to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.
What was that about hats again?
- Oh, people aren't wearing enough. - Is this true?
Certainly. Hat sales have increased, but not pari passu, as our research...
When you say "enough," enough for what purpose?
Can I just ask, with reference to your second point,
when you say souls don't develop because people become distracted...
Has anyone noticed that building there before?
This scene was going to be part of the whole Permanent Assurance sequence.
As the building comes into the big glass city,
we were then going to cut inside to this scene,
and the scene would then go on.
And then we would cut outside, and they would start firing.
And in through the window would come the ancient pirates.
Because the film wasn't sitting happily at this position when we pulled it out,
we were able to put that scene in there on its own
and it worked really nicely.
I'm trying to remember,
I think I shot the crushing of the building after we decided to pull it out.
The Crimson Permanent out ofthe main film.
And it just became another way of ending that little sequence.
part six. The autumn years.
When we came to shoot this scene, originally, Harry, our production designer,
wanted to use the same restaurant location
that we had for the philosophical conversation.
And I kept on saying, "No, I think it's got to be bigger. " I couldn't think why.
I looked at my little drawings, and I saw it had...
I'd got sort of, a very big restaurant room on two levels as well.
Eventually I went all the way around London with Harry
looking for likely looking restaurants.
Eventually we got to the RAC club and said, "Yeah, it's more like this. " Huge restaurant.
Harry said, "I know where we can do it. "
So we did it at the Portland Street Barnes.
Oh, what a frightfully witty song.
What's interesting about Creosote, originally, when it was written,
Terry was trying to convince me to play Creosote.
Thank God I didn't because Terry was absolutely brilliant as him.
I think they felt confident that I could do projectile vomiting
and general grotesqueness, but Terry's performance was wonderful.
Now, Mr. Creosote here. I think I should have listened to Jim Acheson.
Jim had designed this costume. I had a body cast for it
and a sculptor designed the shape and everything.
And I pushed Jim to go a little bit bigger.
I think Jim's original thoughts were right.
We also had a sequence of Mr. Creosote outside the restaurant
walking along with his stomach on a pram, on a wheelbarrow,
which for some reason we didn't use, but you can see that clip on the DVD.
This scene just started. I wrote on a piece of paper,
"Scene in the worst possible taste. "
I didn't know where it was going, then it sort of went,
"Better?"How are you feeling?" "Better."Better get a bucket. "
And then it went on from there.
And in fact, when Mike read the scene out to the script reading,
nobody laughed, nobody thought it was funny.
And it got put on the rejects pile, and we weren't going to do it.
Then about a month later, John rang up and said,
"I have something that'll bring a smile to your face.
"I've just been reading that Mr. Creosote sketch, I think it could work rather well. "
What John had realized was that the waiter was the funny character.
John then came up with the wafer-thin mint.
A new bucket for monsieur.
You see the vomit there, that one there was from the first day's shooting
when instead of having it... Watch here, I don't open my mouth in time.
And the vomit is coming from the other side of my face, not from my mouth.
We found that it didn't work 'cause you got a shadow on the vomit
once it started streaming.
So our special effects guy got a standby thing
where I had something going into my mouth.
So it was actually coming out of my mouth, which was better.
The vomit was made of...
Well, it was Russian salad and vegetable soup.
I think we had about 90 gallons of it in a big bath on the set.
And as it took four days to shoot this sequence
it was fine at the beginning, but by the end of the fourth day
under the lights and everything
the Russian salad and vegetable soup began to smell exactly like it looked.
It was revolting.
In fact, I will personally make sure you have a double helping.
And yet, even though it was so disgusting, all the extras...
We asked for volunteers to have the stuff thrown at them
'cause we had a catapult rigged up, which would shove about 15 gallons at once.
Yeah. No, wait a minute. I think I could only manage six crates today.
I hope monsieur was not overdoing it last night.
- Shut up! - D'accord.
The new bucket and the cleaning woman.
That's the new system. It's actually coming from my mouth from a little tube.
Carol is just wonderful in this scene. It's my favorite thing that she does.
- Perhaps you're not happy with the service? - No, no complaints.
It's just that we have to go. I'm having rather a heavy period.
And we have a train to catch.
Oh! Yes, of course. We have a train to catch...
Everybody's reactions.
- Madam? - Perhaps we should be going?
I can't imagine anyone but Carol doing that. She's so...
She carries off that kind of thing with such verve.
Oh, dear. I have trodden in monsieur's bucket.
It was just something to get people not to react, not to do terrible reactions.
Again, it's scenes like Creosote that really makes you feel good to be a Python.
To have somehow been, in some small way, a part of
adding this to the culture of the 20th century.
Originally, I had a fish coming out of my mouth,
but we had to do this about 20 times 'cause John kept corpsing for some reason.
Eventually, I couldn't put the fish in anymore,
so I had to use a bit of pineapple.
Oh, sir, it's only a tiny, little thin one.
- No, fuck off. I'm full. - Oh, sir.
It's only wafer-thin.
Look, I couldn't eat another thing. I'm absolutely stuffed.
This was John's inspiration, the wafer-thin mint.
just one.
- All right, just one. - Just the one, monsieur.
John kept on laughing at this point. I think it was take 20 or something.
Bon appetit.
This is when he explodes.
We had an inflatable body for the first bit of the explosion.
You never see him explode. I never thought it was going to work.
You just see him blowing up, and then Julian, who was editing,
just put in a couple of flash frames
and you read it as an explosion.
Two flash frames, then you go to all this gunge being hurled across.
Our special effects man put that wonderful pumping heart in it,
which was a plus, and the dangling watch chain.
Thank you, monsieur, and now, here's your check.
Julian always had the idea to have this bit at the end of the film.
The Meaning of Life, part 6B. The Meaning of Life.
You know, Maria, I sometimes wonder...
This is all one take.
From the beginning here, it's as long as a piece of film is.
It's about three-and-a-half minutes.
It's just one take, right from...
Through all the cleaning lady's little poem
and then going to Eric, then following Eric,
then going out into the street with Eric and following him up the road.
It's all one take. It's quite a tour de force.
but it didn't teach me nothin', I recall,
and the Library of Congress you'd have thought would hold some key...
Of course, the whole place stank by this time.
They had a wedding the next day. I hope they got the place cleaned.
I worked there from 9 till 6, read every volume through,
but it didn't teach me nothing about life's mystery.
I just kept getting older, and it got more difficult to see.
Till eventually, me eyes went and me arthritis got bad.
So now, I'm cleaning up in here.
But I can't be really sad,
'cause you see, I feel that life's a game.
You sometimes win or lose,
and though I may be down right now,
at least I don't work for Jews.
I don't know why that's funny.
It's just racism, coming out of the blue.
Winning your audience over, there's just some totally
extraneous racism, just suddenly...
I love this drift across to Eric.
As for me...
If you want to know what I think, I'll show you something.
- Come with me. - I was saying that...
Don't forget it is still one take from here.
From the start of the cleaning lady
giving her life story.
Come on. Don't be shy.
The grand entrance.
Mind the stairs, all right?
An age of civic architecture that doesn't exist anymore.
I think this will help explain.
Now we go out into the street.
Come along. Come along.
Over here.
The editor put on this nice car squeal.
More interesting.
I think this is where
the film ran out and we had to do a little mix.
This way.
Stay by me.
You can imagine this is at the end of the film.
I think it'd be really good. Eric did this so well.
It was just this magical place.
This cottage just set in a park. There was no road to it.
And no... Nothing. And there were pigeons sitting on the roof.
You can't actually see them on this DVD.
one day, my mother,
she put me on her knee and she said to me,
"Gaston, my son,
"the world is a beautiful place.
"You must go into it and love everyone.
"Try to make everyone happy and bring peace and contentment,
"everywhere you go. "
So I became a waiter.
Well, it's not much of a philosophy, I know.
There are the pigeons, you can see them there, the doves.
I can live my own life in my own way if I want to.
Fuck off.
Don't come following me.
The Meaning of Life, part seven. Death.
Strange, burying somebody on the beach.
This man is about to die.
In a few moments now, he will be killed, for Arthur Jarrett is a convicted criminal,
who has been allowed to choose the manner of his own execution.
The sequence of Graham running and being pursued
by bare-chested babes
was one of the deaths that we had been talking about doing
in the version of the film that involved the court case.
These various executions. This was one of them.
Arthur Charles Herbert Runcie MacAdam Jarrett,
you have been convicted by 12 good persons, and true,
of the crime of first degree making of gratuitous...
It's interesting watching the film because
part of the running-around sequence takes place in Shad Thames,
which was then a derelict area, which became...
Oh, God!
Sorry, I can't speak anymore. I just need to concentrate on the images.
Oh, these lovely girls. They were so beautiful.
All of them. They were just so lovely. I think I was in love with all of them.
"Where are these girls now?" we ask ourselves.
They're just so game, aren't they?
We never got into the Freudian interpretation of Graham,
a professed homosexual, being pursued by bare-chested women to his death.
I like the way the girls just brush their hands off after.
This is me, isn't it? Animation.
In some ways, I wish I had done the artwork a little better on this.
I want to end it all!
Goodbye! Goodbye!
I've always liked the idea, I still think it works,
the mass suicide of autumn.
I think if I were to do it again I might change the artwork and do a betterjob.
But I was too busy making a live-action short film,
so I had to bring in some friends to do the artwork.
Mummy?
It's a lot of leaves to make.
It's the timing, of course. It's so wonderful.
It was interesting, and I had to bring in more help than normal on the animation.
So even when you see the figure of the Grim Reaper
rising up out of the grave, that's proper animation.
So I had to bring in truly talented and experienced people for a change.
Now, for this next sequence
for some reason, I insisted on John being Death here.
It was so cold. The rain was horizontal.
John was... I thought, "It has to be John, 'cause he's such a distinguished shape. "
Of course, it could be anybody, actually. But John was standing there...
Instead of being furious, he was laughing, 'cause he said it was so awful.
It was so cold.
Yes?
Is it about the hedge?
- Well, I'm awfully sorry, but... - I am the Grim Reaper.
- Who? - The Grim Reaper.
- Yes, I see. - I am Death.
Yes, well, the thing is, we've got some people from America for dinner tonight...
- Who is it, darling? - It's a Mr. Death or something.
He's come about the reaping? I don't think we need any at the moment.
Hello. Don't leave him hanging around outside, darling. Ask him in.
- I don't think it's quite the moment. - Do come in. Come along.
Come and have a drink. Do. Come on.
It's one of the little men from the village.
Do come in. Please.
This is Howard Katzenberg from Philadelphia.
- Hi. - And his wife, Debbie.
Hello, there.
And these are the Portland Smythes, Jeremy and Fiona.
- Good evening. - This is Mr. Death.
- Do get Mr. Death a drink, darling. - Yes.
Mr. Death is a reaper.
The Grim Reaper.
Hardly surprising in this weather.
So you still reap around here, do you, Mr. Death?
I always find it very strange playing American,
having to do an American accent.
It's harder than you think, especially when I've got one.
We were just talking about some of the awful problems facing the Third...
And Michael is very attractive, isn't he?
Eric, though, of course, is the babe.
Terry is always just such an old tart.
In order for him to be able to walk into the middle of the table
we just had the table cut away so he could walk into the middle of it.
Mike's character is just such a wonderful lady.
Well, isn't that extraordinary?
This is the only time I got to play a sort of
anything like a halfway sexy woman.
Not particularly blowsy. But listen to her.
It was very odd directing when I was dressed in the silk dress
and made up.
No. Obviously not.
- I'll tell you something, Mr. Death... - You don't...
Just one moment. I'd like to express on behalf of everybody here,
what a really unique experience this is.
- Hear, hear. - Yes, we're so delighted
that you dropped in, Mr. Death.
- Can I just finish, please? - Mr. Death.
Is there an afterlife?
Mike's expression there. The one who's asked the right question.
Smug satisfaction.
- Can I just say this at this time, please? - Silence! I have come for you.
You mean to...
Take you away.
That is my purpose.
The extraordinary thing about John, who is inside there,
it's not just John Cleese's voice, he is Death.
He seemed to be
the most comfortable and happy I've ever seen him
inside this sack of stuff.
He had to manipulate this hand for which he had some sort of controls.
But he just found himself on another temporal plane
when he was in there and maybe...
I don't know what John gets up to at home. Maybe he does this sort of thing.
At night he puts on shrouds and pretends to be Death.
Dead.
- All of us? - All of you.
It was the most thankless task, being inside there,
because anybody could have done it. But John was...
He wanted to do it. He insisted.
And once he was in there, he didn't want to come out.
Be quiet! Englishmen! You're all so fucking pompous!
None of you have got any balls.
- Can I ask you a question? - What?
How can we all have died at the same time?
She asked the right question again.
Clever one, don't you think?
One of the great moments when he points to
the salmon mousse.
The salmon mousse.
Darling, you didn't use canned salmon, did you?
John was rather pleased with the articulated finger.
He had a little handle. If he squeezed the handle, he articulated a finger.
- That's what John loved doing, that finger. - Look at that.
The great thing about John doing it is his timing is exquisite.
And probably if one had got a performer in there, they wouldn't have moved
or their timing wouldn't have been as good.
It was like when we did Holy Grail and John was the Black Knight,
once again inside of a black space that nobody could see was him
and he loved it.
Come.
The fishmonger promised me he'd have some fresh salmon.
He's normally so reliable.
- Can we take our glasses? - Good idea.
Mike's great improvised line, here.
Hey, I didn't even eat the mousse.
It wasn't in the script. It's one of the few bits of improvisation.
Strange-looking house. Not sure what it was meant to be.
It's on the Yorkshire Moors.
- Shall we take our cars? - Why not?
- Good idea. - Why not?
The idea of the death party getting into their cars.
They're far too bourgeois. Then you have the ghost cars.
Great tunnel towards the light.
That's done with about three or four layers
that I just kept turning on themselves and then mixing it together.
It worked. Cheap, but effective.
Behold Paradise.
Paradise is a Holiday Inn. Would you believe it?
Hello. Welcome to heaven.
Excuse me. Could you just sign here, please, sir?
Thank you. There's a table for you through there, in the restaurant.
Thank you.
- For the ladies. - Afterlife mints.
- Thank you. - Happy Christmas.
- Oh, is it Christmas today? - Of course, madam.
It's Christmas every day in heaven.
- Oh! How 'bout that? - Lovely.
The idea here was like a walk-down.
We see people from various different parts in the film.
All the kids there from Every Sperm is Sacred,
the Zulu warriors, the girls, First World War characters.
There's going to be a show.
I just love the idea of it being
a sort of 1930s kitsch.
The orchestra coming up on a
raise and there's this huge stairway.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
It's truly a real honorable experience to be here this evening,
a very wonderful and warm
and emotional moment for all of us.
And I'd like to sing a song,
for all of you.
It's Christmas in heaven All the children sing
The angels, they've all got false breasts, of course.
Quasimodo with breasts.
The angels there.
The girls didn't want to
show their own breasts. They didn't mind...
This is one of those expensive shots. We had to make a swimming pool.
I love these female Santa Clauses with exposed bosoms.
This was a very complex shot of the TV, here.
It'd be easy to do now, but it's very complex because we go into this other TV as well.
So we've got several things working at once.
There's gifts for all the family
There's toiletries and trains
There's Sony Walkman headphone sets
And the latest video games
It's Christmas It's Christmas in heaven
It was just a sort of nightmare with the girls treading on the lights
because if they trod on a light, we had to start the whole thing again.
Wait. Then there's a...
Girls being flown. Where on earth could this sequence go from here?
Every single day is...
They get switched off.
Well, that's the end of the film. Now here's the meaning of life.
Thank you, Brigitte.
Well, it's nothing very special.
"Try and be nice to people. Avoid eating fat. "
"Read a good book every now and then. Get some walking in,
"and try and live together in peace and harmony
"with people of all creeds and nations. "
And finally, here are some completely gratuitous pictures of penises...
This sequence seems a bit old-fashioned now
because pictures of penises don't mean anything now,
but this was made in 1982, '83.
It seemed kind of relevant then,
but things changed in the '80s and '90s.
being stabbed with knitting needles by gay presidential candidates,
vigilante groups strangling chickens,
armed bands of theater critics exterminating mutant goats.
Where's the fun in pictures? Oh, well, there we are.
Here's the theme music. Good night.
It ends with a television set.
And Eric's wonderful song.
That's evolving and revolving at 900 miles an hour
There it is, The Meaning of Life.
"Simon Jones, Patricia Quinn, Carol Cleveland, Judy Loe,
"Andrew MacLachlan, Mark Holmes, Valerie Whittington. "
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm at 40,000 miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side
It bulges in the middle 16,000 light years thick
But out by us, it's just 3,000 light years wide
We're 30,000 light years from galactic central point
We go round every 200 million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go at the speed of light, you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is
So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth