M0nti Pyth0n's The Meaning of Liff

Pictures and Video

The Meaning of Life Director's Cut: "Middle Age"
(featuring Carol Cleveland as Diana the Waitress)
(2.35 MB)

Deleted scenes from the Meaning of Life DVD. The "Middle Age" segment of the film, starring Michael Palin and Eric Idle as the Hendys, suffered severe cuts. A lot of very very funny material was cut out, including Carol Cleveland's appearance as Diana the Waitress. Here is the full uncut version of this segment of the film - you'll see Terry Gilliam as Ricky the Mongol Porter, and more of M'lady Joeline, also played by Gilliam in drag. I've also left in the parts of this chapter of the film that did survive the final cut - the scene with John Cleese. Terry Jones wishes he hadn't cut these scenes, and you can see them inserted back into the film on the DVD! Buy it ...

Meaning of Life deleted scenes:
"Fighting Each Other:" Processed Cheeses
(7.32 MB)

From the wonderful Meaning of Life DVD. In scenes deleted from the "Fighting Each Other" chapter of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, Terry Jones and Eric Idle talk about war and processed cheeses, and Eric confesses to Graham Chapman's doctor about feeling rather randy ....

Meaning of Life deleted scene:
The Adventures of Martin Luther
(7.32 MB)

From the wonderful Meaning of Life DVD. In a scene deleted from the final cut of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, thrill to Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman in "The Adventures of Martin Luther!"

Videos from The Meaning of Life:

Mr. Creosote explodes. And now monsieur, the wafer thin mint. It's only wafer thin. 1.4 megs.

The Crimson Permanent Assurance. It's fun to charter an accountant, and sail the wide accountancy. 1.7 megs.

Find the Fish. I wonder where that fish has gone. It was such a lovely little fish. And it went wherever I did go. 1.3 megs.

Marching up and down the square! Does someone here have something better to do than marching up and down the square? 1.8 megs.

Visit the Image Gallery
by Linus the Llama!

Carol says, "visit our gallery of images from the Meaning of Life CD-ROM video game, by 7th Level and Panasonic!"

"Oy vey, I better not miss out on PythoNET's special gallery of pictures from the MEANING OF LIFE DVD and DELETED SCENES!"

Sounds

A few favorite WAVs to lighten up your Windows evirons.

Visit our Meaning of Life WAV directory!

Meaning of Life album pt. 1 (mp3, 29 MB)

Meaning of Life album pt. 2 (mp3, 31.9)

(rename these .001 files to .mp3s once you've downloaded, to play them)

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MIDI Music

Synthesized versions of your Python favorites.

The Galaxy Song (by Eric Idle) : Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving... Another gem by the incomparable (or is that incomprehensible?) Steve Hull [STHMID@aol.com]... Kind of shows you your place in the universe, doesn't it?.

Or get our entire Monty Python MIDI Collection in one ZIP! It includes the above tune and much, much more. If you haven't DL'ed it yet here's your chance!

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Need help on the Meaning of Life CD-ROM game? Check the Links page for further info at Bettycat's page.

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MONTY PYTHON - IS MEANING OF LIFE THEIR LAST LAUGH TOGETHER?
PREVIEW MAGAZINE JULY 1983
FILM FEATURE BY KIM HOWARD JOHNSON

Michael Palin is a middle-aged socialite who copes with Death at a dinner party. Graham Chapman performs live organ transplants. Terry Jones gorges himself as Mr. Creosote - the world's fattest man. Eric Idle suffers from a rather nasty bite while encountering a Zulu War. Terry Gilliam invents arts of piracy. John Cleese advances sex education in the English public school system.

"Monty Python's Meaning of Life ranges from philosophy to social history to medicine to halibut," says Palin thoughtfully, "Especially halibut!"

The British comedy group's latest cinematic junket baits its audience with a series of outrageous hooks loosely based on the Seven Ages of Man. It is the first original Python film in over four years.

With typical Python strategy, the story does not actually begin until about 20 minutes after it has started. Instead, The Crimson Permanent Assurance - a tale of piracy on the high seas of finance - launches a fleet of laughs with the oddest pirates ever to sail the Spanish Main - or Main Street, in the case of these bookkeeping buccaneers. When a bored, middle-aged accountant finds his fantasy coming true, he and his comrades cast their building adrift to pillage the city. With staple guns firmly in holsters and paper clips in their bandoleers, they lay siege to another office complex, filing cabinets blazing like cannons.

"I've always liked the idea of buildings that sail, so I thought I'd write something around that," reveals Gilliam, creator/director of the remarkable blend of stop-motion animation and live action. "Piracy was in the air, because Graham was working on Yellowbeard, and I've always fancied pirate films, so this idea came to the fore. And, it was a means to do more or different special effects than I'd done in Time Bandits," says the British group's lone American, best known for his wild animated inserts on the TV shows.

"I really designed the sequence as a cartoon, but instead, it was done live. What began as a five or six-minute bit suddenly became 17 bloody minutes long. You see, it's one thing to draw an animation storyboard, but with real people, everything takes longer. They don't just go zip! across the screen, they walk across," he says, noting that his sequences took as long to shoot as the entire remainder of the film.

Life with the Pythons - especially during Meaning of Life - is always a bit inexplicable. The traditional Seven Ages of Man, for example, have now become the Eight Ages of Man.

PART ONE: BIRTH

"It starts in a restaurant water tank where fishes wait to be eaten by human beings like you and me," Eric Idle explains."They swim in and out of the story making comments, witty after-dinner remarks - or in this case, before-dinner remarks!"

The first section of the film includes a family of more than 100 children celebrating their parents' refusal to use contraceptives in the song "Every Sperm is Sacred," along with a visit to the 16th century for "The Adventures of Martin Luther." The sequences follow the hospital birth of a seemingly insignificant human being who, quite fittingly, turns out to play no further part in the picture.While the film features the kind of fragmented skits and scenes that made the Pythons famous, the project was almost grounded before it began.

"I thought we'd make another film rather quickly after Life of Brian," says Michael Palin, "but, as it turned out, we couldn't find a subject that worked. It was a question of waiting and being patient." Although some material held real promise, none of the Pythons could agree on a storyline. The group traveled to Jamaica in January 1982 to force themselves to finalize the script, much in the way Brian was completed in Barbados in 1978. Nonetheless, creativity had apparently ebbed.

"We seemed to be going downhill after three or four days, and nothing new happened," Palin recalls. "Suddenly, we hit on the idea of the meaning of life, and we started writing again. John and Graham wrote the particularly good birth sequence, which was up to the best Python standards."

Reluctantly, Jones admits the system takes off the pressure, and sparks Python productivity. "I was against working vacations at one point, which shows my lack of judgment," he admits. "I really thought it was sybaritic wanking."

PART TWO: GROWTH AND LEARNING

The rugby match between the students and masters of St. Anslem's School is about to be filmed on a beautiful, balmy English day - until the playing area is hosed down to provide a mud-bath for the upcoming bloodbath. Even though the men are twice the size of the boys, Jones decides to seal their victory by appointing Palin referee. By the end of the day, the scattered, broken bodies of the boys' team resembles carnage not seen since-well, since any of their previous films.

Childhood - even in England - was never like this. John Cleese, as headmaster of an English public school, lectures his bored students on the most explicit aspects of sex education. Then, he casually summons his wife. They both undress in front of the class and demonstrate the appropriate techniques, while students stare out the windows - anything to reduce the boredom of another lecture.

In real life, the six Pythons are sympathetic to the lads' lethargy. Palin and Jones are graduates of Oxford; Gilliam is a graduate of Occidental College in California; while Cambridge produced Idle, Cleese (a law graduate), and Chapman (a qualified physician). They have an aversion to authority figures, and cite their typical English upbringing as a major source of Python humor.

"We come from middle-class backgrounds and, like every writer, we create material that is largely autobiographical," says Palin. "We were able to write about accountants and lawyers because our fathers knew them and had great respect for them. We could see their absurdities and idiosyncrasies, which is the real stock of Python characters."

PART THREE: FIGHTING EACH OTHER

It was on a wet, windy mountaintop in August 1982 near Strathblane, Scotland, that the unexpected Zulu uprising took place. The plan called for the Pythons' recreation of the battle of Rorke's Drift, a crucial moment of the Boer War, when an army of Zulus attacked a handful of British soldiers. Unfortunately, the opposite situation soon developed during the filming.

The filmmakers set about enlisting as many blacks as possible to portray warriors. Unfortunately, the plan's difficulty was realized when they began recruiting in near Glasgow. When they finally achieved sufficient numbers, another problem arose - the extras objected after learning they'd only be wearing Zulu loincloths. The local blacks cried typecasting, though it is suspected the decision may have been affected by the near-freezing temperatures.The Zulus began a minor rebellion in the wardrobe room, which ended with them all going home. The unit was setting up on a nearby hillside when they received word that the day's shooting was postponed. Another effort to find a Negro army in Glasgow - quite difficult in itself - was launched.

When the second effort was unsuccessful, the Pythons made the reluctant decision to shoot the next day with a crowd of white extras in black body makeup. After gathering over 100 unemployed shipyard workers, the crew discovered there was not enough blacking to cover them all - so, the greasepaint was only applied to their fronts!

"Luckily, they were just charging toward us," says Palin. "If we had done the Zulu retreat, we'd have had to spend a lot more money!"

The scene in question was not designed to malign the Zulus, but to satirize the division between the enlisted men and officers of the British Army. While the former are caught in the slaughter, the officers casually sip brandy in their tents, only becoming alarmed when one of them has been bitten during the night - not by a mosquito, but by a tiger, which has carried away his leg.

The "Fighting" segment also includes some of the most hazardous moments of the filming, particularly a sequence in WWI trenches.

"There were several dangerous moments in scenes involving shellfire, rockets and bombs, which we filmed just after the I.R.A. bombed Hyde Park," Palin says. "Old ladies were complaining that they saw mushroom clouds in the sky above Elstree Studios, which is right in the midst of the London suburbs."

PART FOUR: MIDDLE AGE

Halfway through the film, our finny friends - suspiciously resembling a certain British comedy group - invite the audience to take a break from the story to play "Find the Fish." The story resumes with a visit to the notorious Dungeon Restaurant.Although Meaning of Life is similar in format to their TV show - which usually featured a series of sketches - the Pythons agree there are unifying elements in the film that contribute to an actual plot, not the least of which are fish.

"It's all about human life, everything from birth to the grave," Jones explains. "It actually ends beyond the grave, so it's more of a philosophical work than a plot. It answers questions about life, but it's aimed at a fish audience. I don't know if you quite realize the vastness of the shoals of herring and haddock in the North Sea alone. We thought if we could tap that audience, we'd really be on a money-spinner."

John Cleese has a somewhat different viewpoint. "I could say that the whole business of conflict is absolutely central to the crises we face in the 20th century, understanding the basic mechanisms of paranoiac confrontation. That is the crucial psychological problem we have to solve, which is, in many ways, the essence of the film.

"Actually," he adds upon further consideration, "Meaning of Life is a cheap, last-minute attempt to salvage some shape out of a rat-bag of unconnected sketches."

Last-minute, perhaps, but hardly cheap. The new film is their most ambitious to date, at least in its budget.

"Life cost $8 million to make, compared to $500,000 for Monty Python and the Holy Grail," Palin says. "You get driven to the studio mornings, instead of having to drive yourself and three other Knights of the Round Table in a pickup truck."

Since their BBC series began in 1969, Palin, Cleese, Chapman, Gilliam, Idle and Jones have collectively been responsible for 45 television shows, dozens of books, records, stage shows and such films as Holy Grail and Brian.

"All of us have such varied styles of working now that it's very difficult to stay together," says Gilliam, coping with the runaway success of Time Bandits. "On the new film, a lot of money was spent on creature comforts, which is all very pleasant, but I find it hard to work that way. It's too pleasant. I think one must suffer for one's art - or at least make everybody else suffer!"

PART FIVE: LIVE ORGAN TRANSPLANTS

Chapman relaxes on the couch in his dressing room during a break in the morning's filming. He's fresh from performing a number of organ transplants from unwilling donors. The front of his costume is completely splattered with blood, causing him to look more like a butcher than a physician. He has drawn on his real-life medical background for the role. In addition to the doctor who performs the live transplants, he works in the birth sequence, and is the army doctor who examined the "amputation" performed by the tiger.

"It seemed an ideal opportunity to say something about the art of healing," says Dr. Chapman. "But, yes, I enjoyed it. In fact, I really felt at home in the operating theater scenes."

He relaxes. The rest of the day's filming requires him to stick his head through a small kitchen window while "performing surgery" to deliver one line - still in costume.

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PART SIX: THE AUTUMN YEARS

Terry Jones, who directed Brian and co-directed Grail with Gilliam, returned to helm Meaning of Life. Shot largely in the studio, it provided a contrast to the location filming of the previous projects. Many of the film's sketches single out the Pythons' talents, rather than combining them all in ensemble scenes.

"Shooting was much more difficult than we expected," Jones says, "especially Mr. Creosote, which took a whole week to complete. I was in an extremely large costume, about six feet wide, which was like trying to direct from inside a cage. I couldn't move!

"I really enjoyed working with John that week. Quite often he and I are poles apart, but John was really in top form, 'coming up' with very funny ideas," he says, referring to a rather disgusting scene in which he, as the world's fattest man, gorges himself in a plush restaurant.

PART SEVEN: DEATH

As with every aspect of a Python film, death works in unusual ways. A condemned prisoner, played by Chapman, chooses his own fate, and is chased off the edge of a sheer, rocky cliff by a bevy of naked girls, falling into a grave where the funeral service is already in progress. The sequence was filmed on an Elstree back lot, where over a dozen young, brave nude girls were expertly fitted with cricket pads and bats to swing at the condemned man. The spectators - carpenters, painters, electricians, and people never before seen near a film unit - turned out by the hundreds. They encouraged the performers, particularly fascinated by the goosebumps caused by the chilly English climate.At one point, the ladies were running across the railroad tracks, and one of them turned her ankle. She became the subject of a considerable amount of attention from the Good Samaritans in the crowd, who edged forward for a closer look, and, as Graham Chapman recalls, "We had to call off filming for the rest of the day." Most of the delays took place on location - including one sequence on a windy, rainy moorland in North Yorkshire.

"It's the wettest place in England, which is a pretty wet place in itself," Chapman notes. "One day, I waited from 7:00 AM to 5:00 PM to get a shot, which consisted of me opening a door to find John dressed as the Grim Reaper. My shoulder was the only part of me in the shot, and John was hidden in a robe and hood. Poor John - it could have been anyone in the robe - or even a bundle of sticks - but we both had to wait around all day."

That location claimed more than one casualty, and rates high on Palin's discomfort scale. "I was playing an American socialite - the wife of Terry Gilliam - sort of a Nancy Reagan, but 20 years younger, very expensively dressed with blonde coiffured hair and all. By the time I got my makeup on - my eyelashes, punitively painful earrings, blonde wig, long red cocktail gown - I looked extraordinary, like a real old banger.

"John finished his bit; I was stuck dressed as this Reagan socialite on top of the moorland in this hostel, a place for people who go hiking, men with hairy legs who carry backpacks and all that. The look on their faces when they saw me coming downstairs in the morning had to be seen to be believed. We spent almost a week on the scene, every day getting into this rig. It really put me off transvestitism as a career."

PART EIGHT: LIFE AFTER DEATH

"This was the first time I've ever had to dance - aside from my drinking days back in the 60s, when I used to dance and crawl around a lot," admits Graham Chapman - a recovered alcoholic - during his Busby Berkley-like production number at the film's close. "Actually, it was probably my favorite scene, even though it was terrifying the first time I had to lead the 25 professional dancers down the huge stairway." The gigantic set was crammed with extras resembling characters from previous scenes, in addition to girls - suspended by wires - flying through the air. The complicated sequence was prolonged even further each time the dancers accidentally stepped on the neon lights decorating the stairs - and had to wait for repairs. At the week's end, the last light to be broken was stepped on by the electrician who had been changing them, and who was doing most of the complaining. Chapman considers it poetic justice." I even had to sing, and carried around a Walkman to learn the words," he notes. "It's the start of a whole new career for me, actually - I'm going to start ringing up all the rock stars who have asked for parts in my movies, and ask them to let me do some tracks on their albums."

Like Chapman, all the Pythons have their opinions and their own individual projects. Cleese and Idle are appearing in Chapman's upcoming Yellowbeard (PREVIEW 53). Jones is finishing a serious screenplay involving the peasants' revolt of 1381, while Palin unwinds from The Missionary (PREVIEW 50). The pair are planning to write a film together later this summer. Gilliam has been deluged with directing offers from Hollywood after Time Bandits ("Suddenly people are crawling out of the woodwork with projects they've been working on for five or six years, thinking I'm the only one who can direct them. I don't know what they would have done had there been no Time Bandits.") He prefers to work on his own films, including a screenplay being written with playwright Tom Stoppard.

"I feel very bound to Python, and I think it's important that we stay together," Gilliam sums up. But, on the other hand, I want to be getting on with my own projects. If Meaning of Life is very successful, it'll probably make the group stronger. If it isn't, I think that could be it!"

Regardless of personal successes or failures, Palin maintains his fierce loyalty to the group.

"However successful anything I did, I'd love to have the opportunity to go back to Python," says genial Michael Palin. "I think Python is funnier, in a way, than anything we do individually - not belittling any projects, but Python is the one unique feature of all our acting and writing lives.

"I'd say the film will make it more, rather than less likely that there'll be another Python movie. It'll show that we can go almost anywhere after Meaning of Life. There's something very, very good about working in a group. The old magic was still there."

Or as Chapman puts it: "It's quite a bargain, don't you think, to find the meaning of life for just the price of a theater ticket?"



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