#month python life of brian

[loretta-dont-you-oppress-me]

...and a packet of gravel.... public stoning is in again.

[loretta-dont-you-oppress-me]

Thanks! I second that.

How the fuck do I contact Jon Cleese I need to speak to him and his acting company immediately about Stan/Loretta's scene about wanting to have a baby/be a woman because if they cut that shit because it's "transphobic" I'll riot that was my favourite fucking bit of life of Brian it is not transphobic it makes me feel so seen

[lodgeofthecat]

Blessed are the Greek (they invented Gayness)

[yonderghostshistories]

Made more MP Pride flags!

Bisexual Brian Cohen and his mum Mandy Pride Flag 💗💜💙 (inspired by @michael-palin-is-the-loml 's and @theinsurancesketch 's Brian and Mandy Cohen Bisexual flags, also cuz i personally headcannon Brian to be Bi-coded, and that his mum Mandy (even if begrudgingly) would still support her very naughty Bisexual son<33)

Transmasc Brian Cohen Pride Flags (it originally came my crack headcannon AU idea of the movie LoB being mostly the same plot-wise, except Brian was now transmasc. However, after publishing that headcannon on here (followed by a lil fanart I did of transmasc Brian), I'm now in love with the concept of Transmasc Brian <333)

[thesuetyouforgot]

Hello, I have something kinda.....weird to say the least, if you don't mind reading my thoughts that is?

Basically, a few months ago, I had a strange and surreal dream/nightmare kind of thing. It was about Monty Python. But it was a depressing and tragic alternative universe. A universe where John Cleese and Michael Palin both got assassinated/killed on the day of the "Friday Night, Saturday Morning" Life of Brian debate interview, where a religious extremist who really hated the film Life of Brian with a burning passion took out both John and Michael out of spite. Like, utter spite, ya'know?

It was....horrible to think about..yet it was an interesting experience to think about.

I'm okay now, I'm aware it was JUST only a bad recurring dream. But, it just shivers me to the core to think about what would've happened on that day in that alternative universe. What would the world look like? What the Pythons think about the sudden passing of John and Michael? Just what would've happened on that day......

Wow... That's sounds terrible actually & definitely like a dream I wouldn't want to dream myself...

It really is an extremely chilling thought and like you said, interesting in a horrible way. Don't even know what to say - the fear that must cause to the other Pythons, the sheer tragedy of taking someone's life for simply making a funny little movie, all the beautiful things we would have never gotten (like movies, books, documentaries...) etc. Glad it never happened in reality!

--Thank you for sharing your dream & thoughts with me, though!--

[woodlandstarz13]

so far i’ve celebrated pride month by watching but i’m a cheerleader today, and monty python’s life of brian, i saw the tv glow, sleepaway camp, and will & harper last night :3

[nikoundniki]

intro post 🌞

hello! call me Niko, address me by anything. in here you’ll find my fan arts, memes, and video edits on the things i love. though current love that has front view tickets in my heart for the past month is the film Withnail & I

i’ve a lot of interests. they pile up over one another so i must put emphasis on some. interests that are highlighted ‘red’ below are things that i (could) still yap about

i also may (re)post outdated fan arts ^^ they come from the vault in my old ahh insta (pinacolada6969. lots of pink ploy stuff)

music

pink floyd. slipknot. led zeppelin. motley crue. metallica. megadeth. hamilton. slayer. queen. green day. blind melon. kings of convenience. yes. rush. eraserheads. beatles. angel witch. aurora. burzum. infant annihilator. suede. cosmo jarvis. my chemical romance. pierce the veil. judas priest. the outfield. buzzcocks. the offspring. sex pistols. fugazi. kula shaker. simon and garfunkel.

in a nutshell - metal, prog rock, dad rock?! , jazz, classical , punk rock

video games

elder scrolls iii: morrowind. dragon age: origins. stardew valley. the sims. grand theft auto v. grand theft auto: vice city. bully. l.a noire. watchdogs 2. undertale. pokemon: omega ruby. fear and hunger. faith: the unholy trinity. civ v. crusader kings 3. tropico v. osu.

anime and manga

soul eater. nichijou. asobe asobase. ranking of kings. death note. black butler. berserk. 20th century boys. M.W. black jack. given. mob psycho. monster. saint young men. chi no wadachi.

literature

1984. the picture of dorian gray. fight club. frankenstein. american psycho. coraline. lovecraft’s short stories, as well as poe’s.

TV and film

breaking bad. better call saul. sherlock. three’s company. the odd couple. withnail & i. reservoir dogs. the dollars trilogy. re-animator. amadeus. monty python’s life of brian and the holy grail. many more, go visit my letterboxd!

others

AO3. letterboxd.

((my ao3 has adult content!))

thank you for reading. i would love to make friends. i have shitty social skills though — every time i interact with a fan from a fandom that i love , my ahh gets rooted on the spot like a tree. i live under a rock, you see ; enjoying my solitude and all that. i gave tumblr a try so here i am . forgive me if i sound too unusual or something

have a good day, loveys🌞

[panelshowsource]

saved a few anons asking personal questions not all related to panel shows, spamming answers below the cut :)

she/her!

interesting question! first, i think it's very special that you had the opportunity to study at an international university and i am glad to hear you had so many amazing experiences!

i also feel like i need to preface anything i say with... holidays are obviously different from living, and i hope people can trust that i wouldn't base an entire lifestyle decision off, like, being a fan of taskmaster lmao the state of politics, brexit, housing, prejudice, and more make it difficult to say i'd want to commit to life there — plus i really love new york city, where i do feel at home

that said, i would be open to living in the uk for a period of time, yes. i am certainly very motivated to visit a lot of places, particularly in england, and decided last year to start spending a month or two over there every year (this year i think i will be in york! maybe i can post a little about that if people care). the history and motivations behind that decision are really personal to me, but it feels...right. i am really looking forward to my time there this year and treasure being someone who works remotely and can make that happen

living permanently, it's hard to say, but speaking for my interests in history, architecture, art, cinema — it would be wonderful to explore those things more in person, yes!

i really think in the 6+ years of this blog this is the first i've ever been asked about music! which makes sense ofc it just took me by surprise!

hmmm i think this playlist most accurately expresses what i'm listening to a lot of the time + a lot a lot a lot of classical music, some dad rock, and a few balladeers like judy garland and rufus wainwright

i don't claim to be the world's biggest comedy buff or keep up the best with all of the comedy coming out of the uk and american industries — even though i do enjoy it so much! — but growing up i was very interested in comedy writing. in high school, i worked at a dvd store where people could trade in their old dvds for store credit to buy new ones, so we had a HUGE selection of not only new releases but older, sometimes nicher stuff that you typically wouldn't see at a suburban american blockbuster-like shop. i can't stress how formative this was! i would always go through the store and "beautify" the shelves (pulling all the spines up neatly, keeping everything alphabetised, etc) just to constantly look through what we had in stock, grab the old black bar criterion films before some movie buff snatched them up, touch all the special editions (physical releases were more than just steelbooks back then, like stuff like this). each of the employees had a little shelf in the back room where you could store dvds you wanted to buy when you eventually had the money, keeping them off the floor so no customer would see and buy them. i was always reserving 30+ dvds at a time and spent my whole paychecks at work hahaha

anyways, that's how i found a lot of the random british films i ended up loving — by people trading them in or me just running across them at the store: a cock and bull story, death at a funeral, this is england, gosford park, monty python, (particularly holy grail and life of brian), confetti (didn't love this one but it had a lot of actors i really liked in it so i remember watching it quite a few times) and more — but especially withnail and i and in the loop. i was fucking obsessed with in the loop, which i watched on a loop (zing!) and was ultimately how i worked my way backwards to the thick of it as well as shows like the office uk, alan partridge, green wing, fry and laurie, peep show, and more. (the thick of it and peep show were particularly everything to me!) i still have all of the dvds from the dvd store i worked at! lol

in terms of american comedy, i was obsessed with the state and then their groups' projects like wet hot american summer and reno 911 (michael showalter is a great example of a writer/director i don't think is one of the greats but follows his heart & vision, and i really respect that; my fave of his, which is genuinely so good, is hello my name is doris! underrated lil treasure). i also really loved it's always sunny, flight of the conchords, party down, arrested development, jackass and wild boys, and house md, and some of the wild characters on bravo lmao. we had this channel called logo that was my lifeline to queer content before i really had full-time access to the internet outside of a shared family computer, so i was always watching reruns of jeffrey & cole casserole, the big gay sketch show, plus the l word and queer as folk, and they also did syndication of reno 911 (but i already had all the box sets of that 😭). i was never heavy into the judd apatow/bro comedy that was so big in the 2000s, and even the 80s–90s american comedy heavily influenced by the talent at snl wasn't particularly engaging to me; of that, my favourites were probably throw momma from the train and a couple of romcoms

+ every panel show i could get my hands on! and i think because i was really engaged with sketch comedy i was also reading a lot of playwrights, especially alan bennett, harold pinter, and edward albee, who i had (and have!) huge collections of

and, yes, so many of these are at the foundation of my very favourite formats and styles of comedy: mockumentaries , black comedy or dark comedy, existential comedy, stories rooted in reality or plausibility / domestic dramedy. i used to be very engaged by sketch comedy and wanted to crack the science behind writing funny sketches, but i do think i've moved away from that format and filled that void with the improv nature of panel shows (it works for me the way i think the format of podcasts work for so many other people... i wonder if anyone will relate to that comparison)

comedy evolves so much by the decade and i appreciate a lot of the ways in which it has grown, so i don't think of it as a then vs now, which is better, whatever. and like you i can't help but revisit my nostalgic faves often!

i do think eventually he will! but rn he's lapping up that tv money hahaha my very fave is firing cheeseballs at a dog, but they're all genuinely great!

[twosheds]

Hello! Have you seen that Monty Python biopic of sorts called "Holy Flying Circus" that came out 12 years ago in 2011? It's basically about the controversies surrounding the Pythons' movie "Life of Brian" at the time, except told in a more comedic Pythonesque way.

If you have seen it, any thoughts on the movie?

Hello! Well... I'm only about four months late answering this and for that I can only apologise!

I have seen Holy Flying Circus and I absolutely love it. I've actually watched it at least three times :D The first time I watched it I wasn't a superfan like I am now, and was only vaguely aware of the LoB controversy, so it was a bit weird going into without really knowing the Pythons that well. The main reason I actually wanted to watch it was because I'd heard it was very Michael/John centric and that it was kind of shippy... I was like.... ok I have to see this, haha. (I wasn't disappointed!)

(editing to include this gif:)

But since becoming a huge fan and Pyhtonite, I've watched it a couple more times and have loved it on every watch. I think all the actors played their respective Pythons really well, especially Charles Edwards as Mike. I think it was clever that they didn't take the film too seriously and almost made the whole thing a sort of parody of the debate, rather than trying to do something historically accurate. It was very Pythonesque in that way, and whilst I would love to see another Python biopic at some point (especially something that focuses on Graham), I think Holy Flying Circus is a delightful addition to the Python library of goods :)

[mariacallous]

If the question hasn’t hit your For You page or Twitter feed (or group chat) yet, it will: How often do you think about the Roman Empire? The provenance of the query is a little blurry, but it maybe started with this tweet (which also references an Instagram Reel) or possibly this TikTok. Or this one. The point is, everyone is trying to figure out how often the men in their lives think about the Roman Empire.

According to one of those ur-TikToks posted by @paige.elysee earlier this week, you will be “shocked with their responses.” But if my friend group—and the WIRED Culture Slack—are any indication, the responses are simply … interesting? When I sent the question to group chats yesterday, most of the responses skewed toward, “Is this that Twitter poll? lol” or “I got asked this last night. Truly never.” In other words, they weren’t shocking but were definitely amusing. Some colleagues generously interjected with “My brain: ‘The Roman Empire is to men what girl dinner is to women’” and “My theory is that it's because that Daily Stoic podcast is so popular.” WIRED legend Steven Levy offered that he thinks about Ancient Rome, “Every time I write about Mark Zuckerberg.” But according to people who aren’t my friends, the answer is more along the lines of “every single day” or once a week or “a few times a month.”

I decided to poll WIRED colleagues. Now, I’m of the opinion that it’s kind of ridiculous to gender this question—people of all identities can be history buffs, y’all!—but maybe that’s an argument for another time. As of this writing, answers are still pouring in on the impromptu Google Form I set up, but in a group that consists of a good balance of men and women, about a fifth answered that they “never” think about the Roman Empire. “Never” was tied with “weekly,” followed by “monthly” at about 15 percent of respondents.

In my deep, morning-long investigation, there were also more than a few responses that pointed to the Cold War or Pompeii or the 1920s as time periods more worthy of contemplation. This, ultimately, led me to a theory: Dudes/people don’t think about the Roman Empire a lot, they think about media about the Roman Empire. Video games set in the Colosseum, old films like Cleopatra, roughly a million History Channel docuseries, Monty Python’s Life of Brian—these things are burned into our memories. Jay-Z was able to put Russell Crowe’s “Are you not entertained?” at the beginning of “What More Can I Say” because Gladiator was so popular. 

My own ponderings of Ancient Rome tend to hover around the persecution of Christians and the empire’s conversion to Christianity after Constantine. Then I think of Keanu Reeves. One of my former editors responded to my group text query by noting that she’d recently watched HBO’s Rome concurrently with Amazon Prime Video’s Domina to “contrast the characterizations of Octavian’s wife during the Second Triumverate.” Then I Googled this and went down a rabbit hole of my own.

This is the state of media consumption in 2023. Hollywood, hungry to adapt any story it can, has turned history into IP—shows and movies that we now watch with phones in hand and laptops open to delve into whatever new tidbit shows up onscreen. Who amongst us hasn’t lost hours on the KGB Wikipedia page after a binge-watch of The Americans or sought to fact-check The Trial of Chicago 7? Fire up any streaming service and there are hours of content about World War II. I once dedicated nearly a month of reporting to Alan Turing’s “Bombe” code-breaking machine after I saw The Imitation Game. Frankly, Turing is probably my Roman Empire. (Ask me about the Apple logo in the comments.)

As the cliché goes, history is always written by the victors. But in modern times, it often gets translated by screenwriters and then “punched-up” by studio notes. People tend to be obsessed with the past. The longer my text and Slack threads stretched, the more respondents tried to figure out why anyone was even talking about dudes and the Roman Empire in the first place. It devolved into questions about why humans are enthralled by war, the collective fascination with powerful men, and on and on and on. No one ever figured out why the meme went viral—or whether men really do think about the Roman Empire all that much, or more than people of other genders. But we were entertained.

[mmmmmmmmicrowave]

Brian

From the Month Python thing. Life of Brian. Hm

Spin a wheel to be assigned someone!

[mrscottdavis]

Filmmaker-A-Month: Terry Gilliam- Extra Extra Credit

Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)

Director: Terry Jones Writers: Monty Python Cinematographer: Peter Biziou Starring: Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam Seen before: Yes

[0starkafterdark]

Top Tens - History (Rome): Top 10 Best & Worst Roman Emperors (6) Best: Vespasian

Dovahhatty – Unbiased History of Rome XI: Pax Romana   (6) BEST: VESPASIAN – FLAVIAN DYNASTY (69 – 79 AD: 9 YEARS 11 MONTHS 22 DAYS) Founder of the Flavian dynasty (of himself and his two sons), restorer of the Pax Romana, divine pharaoh – and possibly…the Messiah? Well perhaps not that last one – to paraphase Monty Python’s Life of Brian, he wasn’t the Messiah, just a very good emperor. And yes…

[butteredsconesfortea]

Thanks for tagging me @yonderghostshistories 🫶 I love this idea!!

I was barely aware of Monty Python until December of last year, when I went to Liverpool on a Beatles-related trip which really rekindled my interest in them. Then I subsequently developed an unhealthy obsession with George Harrison, and had heard that he financed Life of Brian, so decided to give it a watch!! And now, about 10 months later, Monty Python is a prominent part of my life (albeit in a very, very silly way).

Tagging @memorial-sewer @minstrel-in-the-gallery @montypythonswine @ringosmistress @michael-palin-is-the-loml @starstruckfangirlsposts @right-stopthat-its-silly @thegrapeless @assortedantics @chapmanzz @thehistoryone @arthur-two-sheds-jackson @whizzochocolate @raxacoricofallapatorius42 + anyone else in the fandom who would like to share <3

I’m gonna do my own lil tag game, this time…..it’s-

……MONTY PYTHON RELATED!

SPECIFICALLY,

How did you (yes, you, the mutual and/or other Tumblr user reading this) get into Monty Python?

To elaborate, what is your Monty Python Fan Origin Story? To further elaborate, how did you become aware of and become a fan of Monty Python? Tag 6 or more (or less, it’s absolutely fine either way!) of your mutuals!

I’ll start first. I first became (properly) aware of Monty Python when I was (and still am) in the Six Idiots/ThemThere Fandom (if you don’t know who the Six Idiots/ThemThere are, they’re a British Comedy Troupe consisting of the following 6 members; Mathew Baynton, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond. They were first originally together in the children’s historical comedy sketch show “Horrible Histories” which ran from 2009 to 2014, and since then have went on to create, write and star in the following projects, such as the fantasy comedy “Yonderland”, the Shakespeare comedy film “Bill” (2015) and the supernatural family BBC sitcom “Ghosts”) and I saw a video compilation on YouTube comparing clips/scenes from various Six Idiots/ThemThere projects and their inspirations from clips/scenes from various Monty Python projects, which really cemented in my head (especially after becoming a Python fan) that the Six Idiots truly are the “Monty Python” of this generation, or at least the Six Idiots are like Gen Z Monty Python (imo that is).

Anyway, starting in 2023, when I was on holiday with my family to see my grandparents in India, I started watching the MP films (specifically Holy Grail (1975) and Life of Brian (1979)) for the first time on my (barely working) laptop when both movies were freely available to watch in their entirety on YouTube (shocking, I know right?). And tbh, they were absolutely HILARIOUS! (Plus it was at this time that I had realised my first actual proper bisexual awakening when especially watching LoB, specifically the scenes where both Brian and Judith were naked, and thankfully my parents weren’t there to witness this absolute monstrosity (to them at least) and I have to say, thanks LoB :))👍🩷💜💙)

Then when I came back home to England, I watched The Meaning of Life (1983) (because pirating it on my nearly battered old laptop was really hard cuz it kept annoyingly pausing at random points in the movie) and so I asked either my mum or brother (I can’t remember exactly lol) to rent the movie MoL on Amazon Prime, and after watching it, I have to say, it was also pretty amazing! I think MoL is my personal favourite movie of the bunch tbh, cuz in a weird, surreally Pythonesque avante garde way, it was very emotional and cathartic (to me at least) and it felt fitting as a finale to Python as a whole (at least at the time).

After that, I became REALLY, like, REALLY into Python, I watched some of the sketches, some clips of the films, I bought some of the merchandise, I watched and bought DVDs of some of the Pythons’ other projects, etc.

My first Python crush was Terry Jones, but now my 2 absolute crushes are now firmly Graham Chapman AND Terry Jones, BUT….my 3-way Python crushes are; Graham Chapman, Terry Jones AND Michael Palin (tho I do love them all tbh as (as my mum says) im a diplomat lmao, so I do love Eric Idle, John Cleese, and Terry Gilliam equally too, but for the latter 3 I’m not as attracted to them as the former 3, if that makes sense?). Also, I absolutely STAN Carol Cleveland, Connie Booth and Neil Innes, THEYRE THE BEST FR AHHHH

Plus being in the MP fandom has genuinely made my life better, as I met some of my most WONDERFUL and LOVELY and KIND mutuals of all time, especially my bestest of ALL online bestie friends, @commonguttersnipe !! (Love you Commie darling <33, and she also makes pretty great MP fanfics imo too :))🫶❤️)

Ok, so uhh…..that’s my Monty Python Fan Origin Story.

I now tag: @commonguttersnipe @thehistoryone @michael-palin-is-the-loml

@knoxoverstreet16 @chapmanzz @vilhjalmr

[niroke]

Happy pride to Loretta!

[harrisonarchive]

George Harrison's cameo in Monty Python's Life of Brian; pictured here with Eric Idle and John Cleese. Photo © Moviestore Collection Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo.

“The First 200 Years of Monty Python by Kim ‘Howard’ Johnson has got to be the greatest book ever written. I particularly like the writing in it — it has lots of writing in it, and another thing I like is the color of the outside jacket. It’s ‘really’ great. The typeface is particularly good — very good, and I like this book much more than Salman Rushdie’s book which had larger type and was not about Monty Python (well not much of it was about Monty Python). A great work by a truly great writer, and ‘Howie’ Johnson will be remembered long after other great writers have been forgotten for his contribution to the fast food industry.” - George Harrison, foreword to The First 200 Years of Monty Python (1989)

“[George’s] enthusiasm was contagious. He played the jukebox to inform and instruct. He reveled in sharing his delight in all kinds of music. He would go through periods of furious passions, often lasting for months or even years at a time, when he would insist you shared his joy of Smokey Robinson or the songs of Hoagy Carmichael or the Hawaiian music of Gaby Pahinui or even the ukulele nonsenses of George Formby. During this latter stage everyone had to learn the uke; even Liv he taught to strum away. His taste was, like himself, catholic. He embraced all forms of life. It was to be savored and enjoyed. But music was at the heart of it. It could speak more truly to the soul. And the soul was what George was all about.” - Eric Idle, The Greedy Bastard Diary (2003) (x)