Back in August I asked people to chime in with their thoughts on the cover for my Fall calendar film series program, featuring Terry Jones. Most people agreed that the one showing him as a naked hermit was the way to go. Attached you can see the final product (thanks to all who chimed in!).

Terry Jones came to speak here at the Boulder campus on Sunday, September 30th, for a free screening of his film, THE LIFE OF BRIAN (1979). The event was paid for and made possible by the Conference on World Affairs Athenaeum Program and the Roser Visiting Artist Program. It was a huge success – the auditorium with 400 seats was packed. Several hundred people were shut out, but Terry Jones was a perfect gentleman and, after his introduction to the film, he went outside to shake hands with those who had arrived too late to grab a seat. He probably prevented a riot with that single and simple consolation prize.

We videotaped both the introduction and question-and-answer period that followed after the film. Terry Jones was in fine form and he was engaging, smart, and funny. I finally got a chance to see the recording we made of his talk and thought I’d share it with readers of this site. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera, so the photos you see are taken from our video recording, which are a bit dark and the also show some artifacting. Transcribing this has been a bit more time-consuming than I anticipated, so I’ve decided to chop this into two parts. This week I’ll do his intro. Next week I’ll transcribe select answers that Terry gave to some of the questions he got from the crowd. There was a lot of laughter and clapping from the crowd, so I only added (in paranthesis) those moments when they were so loud as to stop Terry from talking. So, without further ado:

Terry Jones, live at the Muenzinger Auditorium at the C.U. Boulder campus on Sunday, 30th. Introduction to Life of Brian:

I must say, when we first talked about making a film about Bible times my heart sank, actually, because I thought “Oh, God, those are such boring clothes – people walking about in sheets all the time. Our costume designer Hazel Pethig did a fantastic job on them and things like Brian’s hat – he just wears this rim, where his head sticks through it – all look very convincing to me.

I don’t want to talk very much before the film, but it’s a film that very nearly didn’t get made. We got a greenlight from EMI which was funding films in those days. This film’s 30 years old now, as we started in 77 or 78, something like that. EMI said they were going to do the film and we started to do pre-production on it and we ran up about 50,000 pounds when suddenly the head of EMI read the script (laughter)… and he said “Over our dead body are we going to do this film.” So we were stuck, having spent all this money, and Eric Idle phoned up his friend, George Harrison, of The Beatles, (crowd claps)… and George said, “Well, when The Beatles were breaking up I watched Python all the time and Python sort of got me through and I really want to see this film so I’ll put the money up for it.” He said it was probably the most expensive cinema seat ever. (Laughter) And I thought “Eh, well… you know; he’s a Beatle, he’s got all this money. So I wasn’t terribly worried about him putting the money up. And then about ten years later we were doing an interview together and he said he put his house up as collateral against the film. (Laughter.) And if you know George you know that his house is the thing that he lived for. I thought: I’m glad I didn’t know that when we were making the film otherwise I’d been a lot more nervous about it.

What else was I going to say? One of the things was that on the cover of the leaflet the… (someone holds up the cover of the program)… uh, yes, that thing. (Laughter.) It’s got me as the hermit. It’s funny because I showed up to do those shots with me and Graham first and then the other Pythons came along to do the other scenes, and the crowd, and about at some time (later) in the afternoon I was directing to the crowd and telling them to go here and do this and that and Michael Palin came up to me and whispered by me and said “Terry, you do realize that you’re stark naked, don’t you?” (Laughter.) And I must admit that I’d forgotten because it was my costume by then.

Another point of interest is at the end of the film, with the crosses, there’s this large big hole in the ground. In fact, that hole is a house, a village, because we shot the film in Tunisia, it’s a village called Tatooine (laughter) – and it’s where they filmed Star Wars. They named the planet, Tattooine, after this village.

Actually, funny enough, we were also using the Ribat, which is the fort in Monastir (Tunisia). Zeffirelli had just made The Life of Jesus (editor’s note: Jesus of Nazareth) there about three years before. And we had all these Tunisian extras coming up to me and saying “Mr. Zeffirelli wouldn’t have done it like this.” (Laughter.)

Recently it’s become a fashion for TV to have a popularity poll for things and in the last three or four popularity polls Life of Brian, for some reason, has been voted the funniest film ever. (Applause.) I don’t know why, I don’t know why, but I hope you enjoy it and we’ll have a question and answer period after – cheers. (Applause.)

Next week: Terry literally rolls around on the floor as part of his Q&A, and more.