Could a movie like Brian's life be made today?

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When Brian's life was released in the United States, Rabbi Abraham B. Hecht, leader of the Rabbinical Alliance of America, said that it was the most "blasphemous, disgusting and seriously insulting" he had ever seen. "A vicious attack against Judaism and the Bible and a cruel mockery of religious feelings." The Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, the Rabbinical Council of the Syrian Sephardic and Middle Eastern Communities in America, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and even a group of nuns who came to protest with placards at the door complained from cinemas as if they were from the Popular Front of Judea, or from the Popular Jewish Front, or - who knows - from the Popular Front of the Jewish People.

The film was screened for the first time on August 17, 1979 in five US theaters and raised $ 140,000 the first weekend. Almost 20 million while on the billboard. The British Monty Phyton (John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Graham Chapman and Eric Idle) had taken the premiere to America convinced that they would have fewer problems with censorship there than anywhere else in the world. The film was declared "sin" by all types of religious groups, was banned by 39 municipalities in the United Kingdom and censored in countries such as Ireland and Norway . The controversy only multiplied its figures at the box office as if they were bread and fish. In the US, it went from 200 rooms to 600 and ended up being the fourth highest grossing film in Britain that year, just behind Moonraker, Alien, the eighth passenger and Star Trek .

"They made me rich," Cleese ironized about the protests. "I feel we should have sent them a box of champagne or something."

Today, Brian's life is considered one of the best comedies of all time (if not the best) and several polls have chosen his phrases as the funniest in the history of cinema.

We are in 2019, year 40, dB (after Brian) . Could a movie like that be made now?

The chances of an important study now giving a green light to such a project are quite slim

"It would certainly be an even greater challenge," says Darl Larsen , a professor of Theater and Media Arts at Brigham Young University in Utah, and author of five books on the work of Monty Phyton. "The chances of an important study giving a green light to such a project now are quite slim," he insists. “The world has changed a lot since 1979, of course, but we still choose what offends us. The studios are very aware of what consumers think, they want to protect their brands and they listen a lot to the cacophony of social networks . Brian's life was banned 40 years ago in various places in England and in other countries, before even being seen, which means that today he might not even have the opportunity to be produced. Only if it were an independent or guerrilla film , the story would be different.

Recall that if the film reached theaters in 1979, it was due to the commitment of the beatle George Harrison, who mortgaged his house and a recording studio to finance the project after the president of EMI Films read the script and refused to produce it: "I will not let people say that I made fun of the fucking Jesus Christ."

Brian's life , in fact, did not make fun of Jesus Christ. "We realized that we could not make a film about Jesus because he is not a particularly funny character and his speech was not bad at all," Eric Idle said years later about the gestation of the project.

The film was created in Amsterdam, was written in Barbados and filmed in Tunisia. They joked the Monty Phytons about all the ideas that were shuffled before Brian. What if a film about Judas Iscariot, a guy who was always late and could not attend the Last Supper because his wife had invited some friends home, that if the story of the thirteenth apostle, that if a character who was posing as the Holy Spirit and left the Virgin Mary pregnant ... «We started with ideas like these, rather crude, until we made the leap and adopted an indirect approach, creating a character who was born at the same time as Jesus, in the stable next door It was a curious way to avoid blasphemy, ”Terry Gilliam wrote in the shooting diaries.

A film of the same style about the Islamic religion would be absolutely impossible to finance and to release

«Deep down it was a movie about our weaknesses and our flaws. The Monty Phytons tried to portray the ridiculousness of human behavior, in this case when one becomes a believer, ”explains Professor Larsen. «Tolerance and understanding can jump out of the window when we put on the earmuffs, when we become a mafia, or follow something blindly until the destruction of those who disagree with us. I think even Pope Francis would laugh out loud today with the stoning sequence, then he would cover his mouth and his stifled laugh would resonate in the halls of the Vatican.

There is a scene in the film in which Brian de Nazaret drops a sandal escaping from his crazy freaks and they discuss how to worship the shoe in question. According to John Cleese, "that scene summarizes the complete history of religion in two and a half minutes . "

"The great contribution of Brian's life to comedy is that he adjusted the ground and raised the bar a little higher so that after that another type of parody about the life of Christ would be accepted," says Edu Galán , writer and critic cultural and one of the founders of the irreverent satirical magazine Mongolia .

-Could we see a similar movie today?

-I think I would have financing problems, but if it were done, I think I really wouldn't have as many problems as 40 years ago. Precisely because the Monty Phytons paved the ground. Yes, I think that a film of the same style about the Islamic religion would be absolutely impossible to finance and to release ... In the end, it all comes down to which religion is more dangerous and cows more in each historical moment.

-What reactions would there be on social networks today?

-The right would say that with Muhammad they have no eggs and would threaten complaints, boycotts and Christian vigils in cinemas. And the left, probably, would say that the 40-year-old film was more graceful than now, because the left is so.

If one scratches on Brian's life he finds parodies beyond religion that would delight on Twitter for all the offenses of the 21st century. The discussions of the Popular Front of Judea as if it were the left negotiating an investiture in Vistalegre, the ridiculous leadership of Pontius Pilate and his Pijus Magnificus, the bearded women catching a place to lapide in public square or the character of Stan (sorry, Loretta) claiming Your right to give birth even if you can't give birth.

«Religious groups feel safer today, but that does not mean that there were no protests against the film. Twitter could kill the movie before he had a chance to live . Feminists, or women in general, might understand that the film leaves them in the background or infantilizes them. And on top of the Monty Phytons they always wanted to play the main roles of their films and they didn't care about the genre, ”recalls Darl Larsen.

The six members of the comic group played about 40 characters in the movie. «They made fun of others, yes, but they also laughed at themselves, their way of being English, their Englishness , their weaknesses, their class ideas, their differences, their identity ... Besides, they didn't usually go along the path of contemptuous laughter, there was almost always an acceptance of the character or trait they pointed to . It is his great contribution to comedy: it is clear that they had affection for all those characters that made a fool of themselves.

'Brian's life' is Mount Rushmore of antireligious satire, a cushioning milestone

" Brian's life is Mount Rushmore of antireligious satire, a milestone milestone," Galán emphasizes. «The Monty Phytons left something very complicated, only at the height of geniuses, which is their own language and perfectly recognizable and hardly replicable. His genius is that they are not improvable ».

-Do we have less sense of humor today than 40 years ago?

-People laugh, want to watch comedy, want things to enjoy laughing. But today everything is recorded and everything is shared, we see everything, and not all comedy is for all audiences. What there is today is a tendency to tell people how to laugh, why and what .

-What would Monty Phyton laugh at today?

-I would love to make a film about Islam, because they would enter into areas as complicated as with Brian's life 40 years ago. I would love a movie about Mohammed's alter ego, but I wouldn't recommend it if they want to stay alive.

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