As promised from last week, transcribed below are some excerpts from a question-and-answer that Terry Jones held after a free screening of Life of Brian, held in Boulder, Colorado, on September 30th, 2007:

TJ: (Referring to the end of the film where everyone is singing “Always Look on the Bright Side Of Life” on the crucifixes:) Looking at the end scene I just remembered that it was freezing cold. (Laughter.) We all thought we were going to die of sunstroke but instead… And I don’t know if anyone noticed but John Cleese was wrapped in a blanket despite me telling him “John, you can’t do that…”

Q: Could you tell us about the appearance on the talk show Friday Night, Saturday Morning. (Editor’s note: this was a BBC2 chat show that ran from 1979 – 1982)… And as director of this film what were your feelings toward that when Michael and John had to defend Life of Brian against the Church. (Editor’s note: for more on this, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_Night,_Saturday_Morning)

TJ: This was a TV show, a chat show, when Life of Brian just came out and John Cleese and Michael Palin went on it. And they were up against the Bishop of Southwark (Mervyn Stockwood) and Malcolm Muggeridge, who in his early days was an atheist, then he edited Punch magazine, a humor magazine in England, and then he became a born-again Christian… It was very curious. Douglas Adams who wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy actually recorded the program and kept on showing it to me every time I saw him saying “You have to look at it again!” Michael Palin is really one of the nicest people in the world, and you could see Michael getting annoyed. (Laughter.) … They’d say, “Brian wasn’t Christ.” And the Bishop would say “C’mon, c’mon. Of course he was. It’s so obvious.” And they’d say “No, no! He wasn’t. You see that at the beginning of the film.” And it turned out, after the show, that the Bishop and Malcolm had been having a nice lunch and they’d missed the first 15 minutes of the film. (Laughter.) So how these guys had the gall to sit there and pontificate like that… Anyway, it was very interesting watching the audience, they were virtually cheering Mike and John. I think when the Bishop of Southwark eventually says “Oh well, I guess you can go and thirty pieces of silver” the audience actually booed him.

Q: Could you tell us more about Otto?

TJ: Ah, yes, the scene at the end there where these strange people come in and commit suicide. It was the only scene that Eric Idle had written, as a matter of fact, and it was about this Jewish suicide squad. It’s a scene that I’d eventually cut. (Editor’s note: referring now to an earlier scene that establishes the suicide squad.) It was actually quite a funny scene. Otto (played by Eric Idle) was showing how his men could commit suicide and he says to Brian (Graham Chapman) “there’s only three trained suicide squads, look, see, I’ll demonstrate: ‘Men, commit suicide!’” and they all open these trap doors (gestures to his chest as if opening a flap and plunging a knife) and commit suicide. And then he says “There you are. See? A really good squad.” (Laughter.) And then he goes around and realizes that they’re not really dead, just pretending. And the idea was that they were going to set up a Jewish state that would last a thousand years. (Laughter.) But when Brian says “But what about the Palestinians?” He says “Oh, we can put them into little camps, you know.” (Laughter.) There was a little bit of pressure from our producer to lose that scene, for political reasons, and I wanted to keep it in, for political reasons. In the end I decided it interrupted the story, so we cut it… The one good thing about the scene is that when they reappeared at the end it got a big recognition laugh. But when I cut it I realized that I couldn’t cut the suicide squad at the end because.. they’re there! You see them (lying on the ground) in front of you. So we had to put on other voices and explain who they were and it’s not very good, really…

Q: In what countries was the movie banned in and what was the popular reaction when it first came out?

TJ: It was banned in various countries. It was banned in Ireland. Meaning of Life was banned in Ireland. Then I made a film called Personal Services and it was also banned in Ireland. At that point they’d only ever banned four films and I’d made three of them. (Laughter and applause.)… It was banned in Norway and the joke in Sweden is that the Norwegians have no sense of humor so when Norwegians banned it the Swedes advertised it in Sweden as “The film that was so funny it was banned in Norway.” (Laughter.)…

Q: What have you been doing with your talents lately?

TJ: I’ve just written an opera, as a matter of fact.

Q: In Portuguese?

TJ: It’s not in Portuguese but it’s going to be in Portugal. It’s called Evil Machines and it’s a lot of dishwashers, and tumble driers, and motorcars, and motorbikes, on stage singing. (Laughter.)…

Q: What was your favorite Monty Python skit to write?

TJ: To write? Well I suppose.. I don’t know really. My favorite, in a way, was Sviastoslav Richter playing the Warsaw Concerto while escaping from six padlocks in a straight-jacket. (Laughter.) (Editor’s note: the episode was Mr. and Mrs. Brian Norris’ Ford Popular, 1972.) It just worked so well. Ian MacNaughton, who was our TV director, lit it really well with a shaft of light coming onto this piano. And you know the Warsaw Concerto when the orchestra starts in, and you have to get to the dom-dom-dom-dom…, and then this sack rolls in. And I… (at this point Terry Jones starts rolling on the floor to crowd laughter and applause.) …then I get a hand out (gestures for hitting piano keys, and then starts getting back up) and it was great because you don’t have to literally hit the right notes you just have to hit the piano at the right time and it looked pretty good.

Q: What was your favorite character in this movie?

TJ: I quite liked playing the hermit in the hole. I liked the makeup for that. It was really early in the morning and I had this really nice makeup lady affix this large beard onto my John Thomas (laughter) – it was quite a wake-up call.

Q: Tell us about how the script was written, and about the title.

TJ: What had happened about the title was that I wasn’t there, so it had nothing to do with me. (Laughter.) They’d been doing publicity for Holy Grail and Eric came up with the idea of Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory, which Eric thought was a good idea. (Laughter.) And we all came back and started reading The Bible again, and reading the gospel stories, and it’s jolly interesting stuff. But it seemed to us that the humor wasn’t in what Christ, or Jesus, was talking about but it was in the way the church… I mean, you have somebody talking about peace and love and then for 2,000 years you have a history of people torturing and burning and killing each other and fighting… because they can’t quite agree on exactly how he said it. (Laughter.)… The trouble with religion is not the beliefs but the way people use them. And I have to say that the more I read about the Middle Ages and see what was going on in the church then, the crosser I get, really, because usually it’s not to do with people’s beliefs, it’s to do with power, and people using power.

(Terry Jones full talk lasted about an hour. Topics included his work on a book of squashed fairies, initial reactions to The Holy Grail, his favorable reaction to Borat, but disappointment in many other contemporary comedies, a possible re-union project for surviving Pythons where they vent their “spleen about what’s happening in the world today,” regrets about falling out with Terry Gilliam over Life of Brian, and more.)